Soyica Diggs Colbert is the Idol Family Professor and most recently held the position of vice president for interdisciplinary initiatives in the Office of the Provost. She was appointed interim provost in 2024. Colbert has taught in both the Black studies and the performing arts departments, and is an arts and humanities social scholar who studies 20th and 21st century Black theater, literature, performance, and culture.

She is a winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the author of several books, including award-winning Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. In Radical Vision, she narrates a life at the intersection of art and politics, arguing that for Hansberry the theater operated as a rehearsal room for her political and intellectual work.

She has also held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, Stanford University, Mellon Foundation, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University. Colbert’s essays have appeared in dozens of peer-reviewed essays as well as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Public Books.

She has served as the interim dean of Georgetown’s College of Art & Sciences and the vice president of interdisciplinary initiatives. In addition, she has held the position of associate director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, Creative Content Producer for The Public Theatre in New York City, and curator for the exhibition “Art is Energy”: Lorraine Hansberry, World Builder at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.