Edward Davis IV

Biography

Dr. Edward C. Davis IV was born in Chicago via ancestors who built Underground Railroad homesteads on Southern Illinois’ Trail of Tears Highway. As Melungeon Maroons, family freedom papers and DNA confirm his grandmother’s own grandmother had a grandmother who descends from royal leaders kidnapped near Malanje, Angola in 1619. Davis has lived around the world and speaks over a dozen languages. He founded Uloño Geolinguistic Praxis Services, Inc.—derived from the Angolan Umbundu word for “intergenerational knowledge.”

Research

In his dissertation— Beer, Blood, and the Bible: Economics, Politics, and Geolinguistic Praxis in Kongo-Ngola—Dr. Davis follows an alliterative metaphor of production, reproduction, power, and knowledge, using historical linguistic anthropology to unearth agronomics of ancient pharmacology in relation to lyrical beverage ads in terrains impacted by conflict mineral exploitation, vis-à-vis uterine dynastic kinship. This project examined lexicostatistical glottochronology, Lunda-Chokwe algorithmic geometric proverbs (lusona), and museum repatriation.

Education

BA, The Gallatin School, New York University

MA, African American studies, University of California, Berkeley

MPhil, Anthropology, [St. John’s College], University of Cambridge (Gates Scholar)

PhD, African American studies, University of California, Berkeley

Work

For 8 years, Davis rebooted Africana studies and Anthropology at Malcolm X College (City Colleges of Chicago), where he chaired Social Sciences for MXC and led Africana for CCC as Illinois’ youngest tenured professor. Today, Professor Davis designs African American studies curriculum at Southland College Prep High School in Richton Park, Illinois, where advanced students of African American Anthropology earn dual-credit via Loyola University of Chicago.