our team
EXECUTIVE STAFF
Dr. Rosemarie Peña
Founder and President
Rosemarie Peña is a German-born Black German adoptee, scholar, public historian, and community organizer. She founded the Black German Heritage & Research Association in 2011 after more than a decade of work connecting Black Germans, adoptees, families, scholars, and activists across the Atlantic.
Peña earned bachelor’s degrees in psychology and German, a master’s degree in Childhood Studies, and a Ph.D. in Childhood Studies from Rutgers University–Camden. Her scholarship focuses on Black German history, transnational adoption, kinship, diaspora, genealogy, archives, citizenship, and the lifelong work of family and community reconnection. She has taught German Studies at the University of British Columbia and contributed to teaching, workshops, and public programs in university and community settings.
Her publications appear in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes in English and German, including Children of the Liberation and Adoption across Race and Nation: US Histories and Legacies. Her current book project, The Rekinning, follows Black German adoptees across childhood, migration, family search, reunion, community formation, archival recovery, and contemporary claims for recognition and belonging.
Before entering academia, Peña worked in social services with children and families. Her background in social work, developmental psychology, adoption, and lived experience informs BGHRA’s trauma-aware and community-centered approach. She describes this work as scholarly activism: rigorous research made accessible and accountable to the communities whose histories it interprets.
Dr. Sonya Donaldson
Executive Director of Media & Archives
Sonya Donaldson is an Assistant Professor of African-American Studies at Colby College. A former journalist and technology editor, she brings experience in storytelling, media, digital humanities, and public-facing scholarship to BGHRA’s archival work. Her research and teaching encompass Black German Studies, Black diaspora studies, African American literature, autobiography and memoir, Black digital cultures, and the relationship between race and technology. She leads the documentation, organization, preservation, and public interpretation of BGHRA’s audiovisual record.
Dr. Emily Frazier-Rath
Executive Director of Education Initiatives
Emily Frazier-Rath is a scholar, educator, editor, and indexer with a Ph.D. in German Studies and additional training in feminist studies, migration, language learning, and cultural studies. She taught German Studies at Davidson College and has developed courses and public programs addressing Black German art, identity, resistance, gender, migration, and contemporary German culture. Her scholarship includes work on Black German FLINTA* community, identity, and connection. At BGHRA, she develops educator and student engagement, teaching initiatives, workshops, and partnerships that bring the diversity of the German-speaking world into classrooms.
Elisabeth Clarke-Hasters
Executive Director of Arts & Culture
Elisabeth Clarke-Hasters is a Black German actor and professionally trained dancer whose career spans film, television, theater, and international performance. Her dance background includes the Dance Theatre of Harlem and work with Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal. Her screen work includes Sam – A Saxon, among other German and international productions. Clarke-Hasters brings an artist’s perspective to BGHRA’s cultural programming and leads work that recognizes performance, film, movement, and creative practice as essential forms of Black German knowledge and memory.
Dr. Keith Michael Green
Executive Director of Events & Publications
Keith Michael Green is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Africana Studies Program at Rutgers University–Camden. His research and teaching include African American literature, nineteenth-century American literature, autobiography, captivity narratives, multilingualism, Afro-Cuban culture, speculative fiction, and disability studies. His books include Bound to Respect and, as co-editor, Diverse Unfreedoms. Green helps connect BGHRA’s work to Rutgers–Camden and guides conference planning, campus engagement, publications, and the association’s broader public-humanities collaborations.
PD Dr. Silke Hackenesch
Executive Director of International Relations
Silke Hackenesch is an Akademische Rätin in the Department of History at the University of Cologne. Her research spans American cultural history, critical race studies, childhood studies, critical adoption studies, Black American history, and Black diaspora studies. She is the editor of Adoption across Race and Nation: US Histories and Legacies and researches the adoption of Black German children within the wider histories of family, race, civil rights, social welfare, citizenship, and the Cold War. Hackenesch strengthens BGHRA’s relationships in Germany and Europe and supports its international scholarly, institutional, and community partnerships.
