Her research and teaching examine the role of religion in the reconstruction of the post-emancipation U.S and the significance of Christianity in the cultural and political development of the African diaspora in the 19th and early 20th centuries. An alum of the Woodson pre-doctoral fellowship program (2007-2009), Hughes is currently completing a manuscript that studies the entanglements of evangelical nationalism and diaspora in African American missions to colonial Africa. Tera Hunter