About Breaking Bias
Cultural education that begins with human connection.
Building Cultural Understanding Through Authentic Experiences
Our mission
Breaking Bias Research and Consulting delivers cultural education through international immersive experiences, panels, and workshops focused on the African Diaspora, creating safe, engaging spaces for open dialogue and authentic learning.
01
A Global Lens
We study the African Diaspora across both Africa and Latin America, because understanding African-descended peoples throughout the Americas is essential to our shared human story.
02
Authentic Learning
Meaningful learning happens beyond the textbook, through direct engagement with communities, traditions, and the people who live them.
03
Dialogue & Equity
We help individuals and organizations challenge assumptions, broaden perspectives, and build greater cultural awareness, inclusion, and equity.
FOUNDER & PRESIDENT
Deirdre Foreman, PhD
A lifelong student of culture & language
Deirdre Foreman is the Founder and President of Breaking Bias Research and Consulting, a cultural education organization dedicated to fostering understanding, inclusion, and global awareness through international immersion programs, workshops, presentations, and educational experiences focused on the African Diaspora.
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Born and raised on the Jersey Shore, Deirdre is a Professor of Social Science and Africana Studies and a recently retired college administrator with an extensive background in higher education, cultural research, and experiential learning. She has developed and led international study abroad and cultural immersion programs in Ghana, the Dominican Republic, England, Portugal, France, and Spain.
Fluent in Spanish, her passion for the language began in high school and deepened while studying abroad in Madrid, an experience that shaped her belief in language learning as a pathway to cross-cultural understanding and global citizenship.
FIELDWORK & TEACHING
From Accra to the Americas
Deirdre served as a Visiting Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, where she moderated the inaugural KNUST Ghana–United States Relations Student Conference.
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She led the first Research Action Project at Jamestown / Usshertown in Accra and the W. E. B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture, giving students the chance to explore the historical and contemporary connections between Africa and the African Diaspora.
publications
Race, identity & cultural memory
W.E.B. Du Bois's Quest to Challenge Scientific Racism
1906-1932
Breaking Bias: Lessons from the Amistad
Discovering My Southern Legacy: Slave Culture and the American south
FEATURED & RECOGNIZED
CBS New York's Channel 2 News, Black History Month segment with Dana Tyler
Senator James Sanders Jr.'s Let's Be Clear Juneteenth Podcast
Uptown Radio at the Columbia Journalism School
New Jersey State Bar Foundation's 19th Amendment edition of Respect
Beyond the classroom
Center Stage Productions
Deirdre is the owner and producer of Center Stage Productions, a theater company bringing compelling stories to life through performance, spanning acting, directing, producing, and staged readings. She has performed Off-Broadway at the Dorothy Strelsin Theatre as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival.
Memberships
The Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH)
The American Association of Blacks in Higher Education (AABHE)
National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE)
Jack and Jill of America, Inc.
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.®
Discovering My Southern Legacy
By Deirdre Foreman
What was the cultural legacy of enslaved Africans in the American South, and how has that legacy been handed through generations?
For author Deirdre Foreman, this question is a very personal one: in this book, she explores the cultural legacy of enslaved Africans in the American South through an ethno-autobiographical reflection on her own African-American identity and family heritage. Through storytelling and personal narratives, the author describes her family’s cultural practices and how they are directly rooted in those of the enslaved Africans on the southern plantations. Known as “cultural survivors,” enslaved Africans established cultural customs and norms out of resistance to the control of white slaveholders to maintain their independence and pride.
Ideal reading for students of Black studies, African American studies, Africana studies, and related courses, this autoethnography humanizes and personalizes concepts that are crucial to the understanding of Black culture and Black history.
"Cultural education has the power to inspire positive change, strengthen communities, and contribute to a more inclusive and equitable society."