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Performance by the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters.

Keynote Speaker:
Dionne Hoskins-Brown

Research Fishery Biologist, NOAA Fisheries/Director of NOAA Programs, Savannah State University, and Chair, Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission  

Dionne Hoskins-Brown is a Research Fisheries Biologist in the National Marine Fisheries Service Southeast Fisheries Science Center. She also serves as a liaison to Savannah State University (SSU) where she also earned her B.S. degree in Marine Biology.  Hoskins-Brown also holds a doctorate in Marine Sciences from the University of South Carolina.  Since 1999 she has managed NOAA cooperative research programs in which HBCU faculty and students perform research ranging from salt marsh and oyster reef habitat assessment and marine mammals monitoring to studying commercially-important invertebrate fisheries and ocean acidification. Most recently, she introduced Small Uncrewed Air Systems (sUAS) as a tool for student training in habitat research and oral histories to connect fisheries social science to early career marine scientists. In 2009, Hoskins established the African American Fishermen Oral History Project to share the experiences of Gullah-Geechee families on the Georgia coast through the “Voices From the Fisheries” database. She was appointed to the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission in 2017, serving as vice-chair that year, and has served as chair since 2018.