“You are moving in the direction of freedom, and the function of freedom is to free somebody else. You are moving toward self-fulfillment, and the consequences of that self-fulfillment should be to discover that there is something just as important as you are.”

— Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

My name is Olivia McNeill.

I’m an educator, researcher, writer, and consultant based in Durham, North Carolina. 

Olivia McNeill (she/her, they/them) is the Black, queer descendant of teachers, preachers, and farmers from southeastern North Carolina. Over the past ten years, her work has spanned K-12 education, higher education, arts organizations, reproductive justice movements, Afro-Indigenous healing farms, youth restorative justice groups, and gender-based violence advocacy. With training and experience in education, project management, operations, capacity-building support, research, evaluation, and assessment, Olivia is deeply committed to decentralizing traditional approaches to teaching, learning, organizational capacity-building, and research in pursuit of liberation.

Currently, they are a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where they collaborate with Black Southern educators to document their teaching experiences through oral histories and community-curated archives.

Let’s connect

My Practices

  • Education

    I’ve co-created liberatory learning spaces in K-12 classrooms, colleges, universities, and community education spaces.

    My approach emphasizes collaboration, right relationship, and a commitment to teaching that centers our collective liberation.

  • Consulting

    In my work, I have built relationships with arts-based organizations, youth restorative justice groups, reproductive justice movements, Afro-indigenous healing farms, school districts, non-profits, and survivor advocacy organizations.

    In these roles, I’ve led research and assessment initiatives, managed large-scale projects, provided operations support, and built organizational capacity through long-term accompaniment and coaching. 

  • Research

    I am a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts in the Social Justice Education program. My research explores Black educational histories through the lenses of collective memory, oral histories, and participatory archives.

    I am a Research Enhancement and Leadership Fellow and the 2025 Dr. Maurianne Adams Endowed Social Justice Scholarship recipient.

  • Writing

    Whether co-authoring articles, curating resources, or participating in panel discussions, I have created and contributed to platforms that inspire reflection, action, and transformation.

    My expressions are rooted in a belief that storytelling and community-accountable scholarship can be powerful tools for collective growth and liberation.

“We must become undisciplined. The work we do requires new modes and methods of research and teaching; new ways of entering and leaving the archives of slavery, of undoing the ‘racial calculus and…political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago’ and that live into the present.” —Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, with a quotation from Saidiya Hartman's "Venus in Two Acts" (2016)