Tao Leigh Goffe

Tao Leigh Goffe, PhD, is the founder and Executive Director of Dark Laboratory and author of a book by the same title published in 2025 by Doubleday. A Black feminist theoretician, she is Associate Professor of cultural history and literary theory with a focus on the environmental humanities and geology at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). She has worked in the past at institutions including Princeton University, Cornell University, Leiden University, New York University, and Johns Hopkins University. Her research is rooted in decolonial thought, literature, and theories of labor that center Black feminism’s engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Dr. Goffe did her undergraduate training at Princeton where she developed a deep passion for molecular biology and dark room photography, which she studied there as well as literature. She earned her doctorate from Yale University.