Dr. Cleve V. Tinsley IV is appointed as an Assistant Professor of History and Political Science in the School of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Union University (VUU), where he has also been appointed the inaugural Executive Director of the Center for African-American History and Culture (CAAHC).

Trained as a critical theorist of religion and Black culture, Tinsley employs interdisciplinary research—informed by humanistic theoretical approaches and methods in the social sciences—to uncover the historical significance and meaning(s) of various African-American formations, freedom struggles, and cultural productions. His research ultimately seeks to lay bare the potent contributions, while acknowledging some of the inherent complexity, of African-American cultural life and thought.

Tinsley is quickly emerging as a noted interpreter of religion and Black freedom movements, recently commenting on the role of religion in light of recent uprisings for Black lives for the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University. He is the co-author of Embodiment and Black Religion: Rethinking the Body in African-American Religious Experience and is working on his first monograph, tentatively entitled Making Black Lives Matter: Religion and Race in the Struggle for African-American Identity.