Joshua Baker is a second-year doctoral student in the Experimental Psychology program concentrating in Social Psychology. His research interest includes Black, queer experiences and strategies of liberation, grief, and minority mental health. Baker gained his Bachelors and Masters of Social Work from Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical University and is a Licensed Master Social Worker in the State of Alabama. Baker's teaching philosophy is inspired by an excerpt from Novelist Toni Morrison's Beloved: Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all. Pedagogy that is not inclusive, that does not honor the importance of intersectional identity, that does not extend grace, and that views students as simple means to policy metrics ain't love at all. Baker believes that we should educate because of love. Love of knowledge. Love of people. Love of creating a better world. We, as educators, must not remove or distance ourselves from the intensity and passion that lies within the educative process. Outside of academia, Baker is a creative. He has had the opportunity to feature at Out Loud HSV and perform at 100 Thousand Poets for Change Birmingham. He has had work published in Out Loud! HSV: A Year in Review (2016-2019), Aura Literary Arts Review, and Hypertrophic Press. Baker was a member of Out Loud HSV's 2018 Poetry Slam Team and has led various poetry workshops rooted in harnessing the power that lies in our Joy, our identity, and our immutable truths. In 2020, Baker was selected as the Editor’s Choice Winner for the Button Poetry Video Contest. Baker has also self-published three poetry chapbooks entitled This Here Side of Creation (2018), Love Poems & Other Ways to Lose A Poetry Slam (2018), and Excerpts from the Wilderness (2022).