An award-winning scholar-teacher, Robin R. Means Coleman is the director of the Black Fantastic Media Research Lab as well as an accomplished, prizewinning administrator. Her research focuses on media studies and the cultural politics of Blackness.  

Coleman is the author of Horror Noire: A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present, 2nd ed. (2023); Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (2011); and  African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor (2000). She is co-author of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror from Fodder to Oscar (2023) and Intercultural Communication for Everyday Life (2014). Coleman also is the editor of Say It Loud! African American Audiences, Media, and Identity (2002) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film (2024) and Fight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader (2008), among many other academic and popular publications. 

Coleman also is featured in and co-executive producer of the award-winning documentary film Horror Noire. The film features a ‘who’s who’ cast of horror experts, including Jordan Peele (Get Out), Tananarive Due (The Reformatory), Ashlee Blackwell (graveyardshiftsisters.com), William Crain (Blacula), Rusty Cundieff (Tales from the Hood), Rachel True (The Craft), Ernest Dickerson (The Walking Dead), Keith David (The Thing) and Mark Harris (The Black Guy Dies First). 

Coleman came to UVA from Northwestern University, where she was the Vice President & Associate Provost for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, and the Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand Barnett Professor of Communication Studies. 

Previously, Coleman served on the faculty at Texas A&M University, the University of Michigan, the University of Pittsburgh and New York University. At Texas A&M, she was the Vice President and Associate Provost for Diversity. At Michigan, she served as the Associate Dean of Social Sciences in the Rackham Graduate School and chair of the Department of Communication Studies.