Andrew Pope

Andrew Pope is the Director of Training at the Scholars Strategy Network. In this role, he works closely with staff and leaders from across the network to develop and deploy trainings that empower scholars to achieve SSN’s mission of using research to improve public policy. 

Andrew has a PhD from the History Department at Harvard University. His academic work explores how ordinary people crossed traditional lines of difference to influence local, state, and national policy. His dissertation, “Living in the Struggle: Black Power, Gay Liberation, & Women's Liberation Movements in Atlanta, 1964-1996,” examined the activism of poor and working class African Americans after the Civil Rights Act made Jim Crow illegal. His research showed how thousands of residents formed diverse coalitions in a decades-long effort to make Atlanta a more just place. His article, “Making Motherhood a Felony: African American Women’s Welfare Rights Activism in New Orleans & the End of Suitable Home Laws, 1959-1962,” won the Urban History Association's Arnold Hirsch Award in 2019.

Before joining SSN, Andrew was a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University's Center for African American Urban Studies & the Economy and taught for Harvard University's Committee on Degrees in History & Literature. He has a B.A. in African American Studies & History from the University of Rochester and finished 1 credit shy of an A.A. degree at Jefferson Community College. 

Prior to graduate school, Andrew worked at the Legal Aid Society of Rochester as a Housing Coordinator, where he represented tenants in court and negotiated with landlords and lawyers to keep tenants in their homes. In this role, he also helped to develop and conduct monthly training workshops for low-income residents in the first-time homeowner program and formed relationships with academic, governmental, and non-profit stakeholders to advance the shared goal of achieving housing justice.

He lives in Somerville, MA with his spouse and their three cats Hobbes, Ariadne, & Jo.