Dr. Maurice Hobson is an advanced Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Historian at Georgia State University. He earned the Ph.D. degree in History, focusing on African American History and 20th Century U.S. History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are grounded in the fields of African American history, 20th Century U.S. history, comparative labor, African studies, oral history and ethnography, urban and rural history, political economy, and popular cultural studies. He is the author of award-winning book titled The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta and the lead historian for the forthcoming With Faith in God and Heart and Mind: A History of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, both with the University of North Carolina Press as well as a corpus of peer-reviewed journal articles.

Dr. Hobson engages the social sciences and has created a new paradigm called the Black New South that explores the experiences of black folk in the American South, with national and international implications, since WWII. For this, he has served as an expert witness in court cases and as a voice of insight for public historical markers, monuments, and museum exhibitions.

In popular media, Dr. Hobson was consulted for the Netflix documentary "The Art of Organized Noize," which featured the Atlanta production team that changed the sound of Hip-Hop with their work with OutKast and Goodie Mob. Also, he served as the chief historian for the documentary "Maynard," which detailed the life and times of the honorable Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr., Atlanta’s first black mayor. He served as the consulting historian for “Hip Hop Evolution: Atlanta,” a docuseries tracing Hip-Hop’s dynamic evolution from its beginning through the 1990s also.  He served as the consulting historian for the "ESPN 30 For 30: Vick" documentary detailing the controversial career of NFL quarterback Michael Vick. He served as a consulting producer and historian for HBO Documentaries’ "Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children," which details the dark history of the Atlanta Child Murders, where Atlanta’s most vibrant yet vulnerable population—its poor black children—were being hunted, kidnapped, murdered, and left in fields around the Atlanta metro-area. He served as the chief-historian for the award-winning iHeartRadio podcast titled “Fight Night and the Million Dollar Heist,” a true-crime podcast series detailing the infamous armed robbery after Muhammad Ali’s historic 1970 comeback fight. He served as a historical consultant for the PBS documentary “Downing of a Flag: A Documentary, A Film” detailing the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag in South Carolina and “This World is Not My Own,” a documentary detailing the legacy of Nellie Mae Rowe, a renowned Black woman folk artist who worked across mediums addressing the racial legacies of slavery and themes of religion and gender.  He is the featured historian and expert on American race relations for Amerika Ungesschminkt (America without Make-Up) with Markus Lanz for ZDF Mediathek—Germany’s Centralized National Public TV and served as the chief historian for “The Epic of Collier Heights Podcast,” produced by 99% Invisible, a sound-rich, narrative podcast that discusses unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world.  In 2022, he served as the chief historian for the documentary “Bo Legs: Marvin Arrington Sr., An Atlanta Story” a film on the life, career, and impact of Judge Marvin S. Arrington, Sr of Atlanta, “Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby,” a documentary featuring the Atlanta Hip-Hop superstar, activist, and mogul Lil’ Baby, the MSNBC News podcast “Get Your Freaknik On, Into America, a show about being Black in America holding truth to power and this country to its promises told by people who have the most stake produced by Trymaine Lee, and  “The BMF Documentary: Blowing Money Fast,” a docuseries about the Black Mafia Family, a drug empire. Most recently, he served as the chief historian for Hulu’s “Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told” chronicling the rise of an annual Black college spring break festival that took place in Atlanta in 1980s and 1990s and served as the host for WABE’s “Redefining History: The Atlanta Race Massacre.”