Founder Bio

KEVIN BURKE is a historian, journalist, and documentary film producer who has developed the podcast series Your Hometown, which he also hosts and produces. In addition to serving as the director of research at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, he is the founder and CEO of Kevin Burke Productions, Inc., a New York–based company. His film credits include working as a producer on the popular genealogy series Finding Your Roots, now in its seventh season on PBS; The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This is Our Song (PBS, 2021); and Reconstruction: America after the Civil War (PBS, 2019), winner of the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award. With Henry Louis Gates Jr., Burke is the coauthor of And Still I Rise: Black America since MLK (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2015) and co-editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir, Twelve Years a Slave (W. W. Norton & Co., 2016). Burke graduated from Harvard College in 1998 and from Harvard Law School in 2003. He received his master’s degree in History and Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard in 2004 and 2006, respectively. A member of the New York State Bar, Burke serves on several boards, including as chair of the Hudson River Valley Greenway Conservancy and president of the Downing Film Center in Newburgh, New York, his hometown. He and his wife, Anna Barranca-Burke, live with their two children in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter at Kevin_M_Burke.

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