Gender+ Justice Initiative
Gender+ Justice Initiative
Research In Residence

Candice Hoyes: Researcher in Residence, 2026-2028

Portrait of Candice Hoyes wearing a glossy black top, with curls against a light background.

The Georgetown University Gender+ Justice Initiative is delighted to welcome Jamaican-American vocalist, composer, and cultural storyteller Candice Hoyes as its Researcher in Residence for 2026–2028.

During her residency with G+JI, Candice Hoyes will develop a collection of essays exploring the histories, practices, and contexts of selected songs from across the Black Diaspora through Womanist theoretical frameworks. Drawing on her interdisciplinary work as an artist and researcher, the project will use the essay as an expansive form for bringing music, history, cultural memory, and Black feminist thought into conversation. Over the next two years, Hoyes will share her work and engage with students, faculty, and the broader Georgetown community through conversations, programs, and collaborative opportunities.

Hoyes is a vocalist, composer, and cultural storyteller whose artistry is rooted in Black history, ancestral sounds, and the people’s archives. A Jamaican American raised on Long Island, she grew up surrounded by gospel, reggae, soul, classical music, and the sound-system culture that shaped her musical imagination. She trained in African American studies at Harvard University and earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where Kimberlé Crenshaw was among her professors. With a remarkable five-octave soprano voice and a deep commitment to heritage and community, she has built a career bringing forgotten stories into the present.

Hoyes made her operatic Carnegie Hall debut in her twenties and first gained wide acclaim with On a Turquoise Cloud (2016), for which she spent months in the Smithsonian’s Ellington Collection recovering overlooked Duke Ellington compositions. She has since championed the music of Minnie Riperton and Charles Stepney and collaborated with leading musicians including Wynton Marsalis, Sullivan Fortner, Junius Paul, Makaya McCraven, and the late Casey Benjamin.

Her solo debut album, Expecting, released in August 2026 via La Reserve Records, is the fullest expression of her artistic vision: an immersive blend of jazz, soul, Afro-psychedelia, and experimental Black music traditions. Inspired by figures including Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, the album transforms archival memory into deeply personal narrative grounded in healing, lineage, and the “Black Feminine Divine.”

Explore more of Candice’s work: