Rev. Dr. Melva Sampson

Rev. Dr. Melva SampsonRev. Dr. Melva L. Sampson is Assistant Professor of Preaching and Practical Theology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. She is an ordained minister of the Progressive National Baptist Convention and an ordained ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church, USA. Her research interests live at the intersections of gender, digital interactive media, performance and preaching.  She is the creator and curator of Pink Robe Chronicles ™ a digital hush harbor that centers faith and spirituality utilizing the womanist tenets of redemptive self-love, critical engagement, radical subjectivity and traditional communalism to elucidate the role of sacred memory and ritual in the collective healing of marginalized communities. In 2022, Pink Robe Chronicles was accessioned into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) Celebrating and Centering Black Women in Ministry Through Digital Black Religion, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship.

A seasoned program administrator and small group facilitator, her published scholarship, sermons and reflections include Going Live: The Making of Digital Griots and Cyber Assemblies www.practicalmattersjournal.org, After Katrina and Rita: What Must I do to be Saved? which appears in The Sky is Crying: Race, Class and Natural Disaster; Hell No! which appears in the final volume of Those Preaching Women: A Multicultural Collection co-edited by the late Reverend Dr. Ella Pearson Mitchell; and No Redemptive Quality: Black Women’s Bodies, The Black Church and the Business of Shame which appears on www.thefeministwire.com

Dr. Sampson is the co-founder of 1Love Festival, which celebrates and centers African Diasporic culture through music, art, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

She earned a Ph.D. in Religion from Emory University; a Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology at Emory University; a Master of Arts in Human Communication Studies from Howard University in Washington, DC and Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Political Science from Virginia Union University in Richmond, VA.