khadijah akeem-cox

khadijah akeem-cox is a Ph.D. student in the GW American Studies department. She holds an MA in History and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a BA in History and Africana Studies from Lafayette College. khadijah’s research interests lie at the intersections of Black feminist theory and praxis, Islam in the U.S., and resistance movements of the 20th century. She researches the sociocultural history of Washington, DC, particularly the proliferation of Islam and Black Muslim women’s involvement in community formations in the late 20th and early 21st century.

khadijah takes pride in being a native Washingtonian, but she remains critical of DC’s historiography, which often omits the narratives of Black women as change agents and community organizers. For this reason, she intends on developing a gendered analysis that examines Black Muslim life in Washington, D.C. with an emphasis on mapping community formations and transformations, Black Muslim aesthetics, and the construction of space.

khadijah is a 2026 recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Graduate Internship on the Spiritual Infrastructure of the Future, where she served as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Minnesota’s Senior Research Fellow. She spent the summer documenting, cataloging, and archiving the influx of attacks on mosques in Minnesota, alongside the interconnectedness of anti-Muslim racism, anti-Black racism, police brutality, and surveillance, by conducting oral history interviews and surveying the Twin Cities.