Dr. Joanna P. Edwards was born in Sherrill, Arkansas. The youngest of ten children born to James Wesley and Laura Freeman Edwards. After graduation from Merrill High School, Pine Bluff, she earned her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, a Master’s Degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Ph.D. Degree from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her area of specialization is the History of Art (African, Meso-American, and Oceanic), with special emphasis on African Studies. She has minors in Art Theory and in African Studies. Dr. Edwards has completed coursework at The American Institute of Higher Biblical Studies for a Master’s Degree in Middle Eastern and Biblical Studies. During the summer of 2006, she completed research at the Ben Zvi Institute, Jerusalem, Israel on the Jews of Ethiopia.

Before attending graduate school, Dr. Edwards worked doing field research for the Legal Defense Fund, the Arkansas Voter Education Project, and as a project coordinator for the Arkansas Arts Council, Little Rock, Arkansas. During her graduate school days at the University of Michigan, she worked as secretary to the Director, Harold Cruse, at the Center for African and African-American Studies. During her studies for the Ph.D., at Indiana University – Bloomington, she worked as art consultant and coordinator for the Afro-American Arts Institute, where she published Perspectives on the Black Experience: Art as Image and Idea. She has also served as a consultant for the African Studies Department, the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign; and has taught at the Lycée Guébre Mariam, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Dr. Edwards taught for six years at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and for seven years at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater before returning home to Arkansas in 1994 she accepted a faculty position at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. In May 2009, after 15 years on the faculty of UAPB, she retired with the title Professor Emeritus. For several years since retirement, she taught Old Testament History online in the Fall and New Testament History in the Spring. Her prayer was that these courses would reach ministers, lay leaders, and Bible enthusiasts throughout Pine Bluff, Southeast Arkansas, and beyond. While at UAPB, she sponsored student intercessory prayer and covenant bible study groups.

Dr. Edwards has received numerous awards, fellowships, and grants for research in Europe and Africa. In 1978, she received a Southern Fellowships Foundation grant to do dissertation research in England and Sierra Leone, West Africa. In 1987, she received a Merrill Foundation grant to do research in England on the economic impact of the slave trade on the development of the shipbuilding industry in Liverpool, and the textile trade in Manchester. During the 1989-90 school year, she received a Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral grant and returned to do research in Sierra Leone, West Africa, and in Europe. During the summer of 1995, she studied the Geographical and Historical Settings of the Bible at the Institute of Holy Land Studies (now Jerusalem University College) in Jerusalem. The studies involved intensive study and exploration of the entire nation of Israel (except the West Bank). In 1996, she was selected to represent the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff on a study tour of the Middle East (visiting Jordan and Syria). In July 1997, she attended the International Dead Sea Scrolls Congress in Jerusalem, Israel; the first Congress held in Jerusalem in 50 years since the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. She has served on the Board of Faculty Advisors of the Arkansas Institute of Holy Land Studies and the Arkansas Senate Closing the Achievement Gap Commission. Each year upon request, she carries students to study in Israel. From 2017-2018, she served on the founding board of the Southeast Arkansas Preparatory High School, Pine Bluff, Arkansas (a STEM school).

For years, Dr. Edwards has led Intercessory Prayer Groups and for five years had two radio programs: Core of Restoration Bible Teaching Ministry and Woman to Woman; in 1992, incorporated the United African Christian Heritage Foundation Unlimited, Inc. She currently serve as Founder/Director of this non-profit 501(c)3 ministry. While teaching at UAPB a group of students requested that she lead a Covenant Bible Study Class. All of the students who participated in this class have gone on to do some aspect of ministry. Some have obtained their doctorate degrees in preparation for their call to ministry. She teaches the Sunday Bible Study at her church; and studied AutoCAD Architecture, Blueprint Reading and Measurement, and Mechanical Drafting and Design for two years to put her vision for an Evangelistic Outreach Center on paper for the Lord’s ministry in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

In 2014, the Lord opened the way, and Joanna traveled back to Sierra Leone to attend the dedication of the City of Rest Rehabilitation Centre (the fulfillment of one of four visions He has given her for this small nation). She carried and presented the plans – based on her vision – for an Evangelistic Outreach Center. She also traveled up to Bo, Sierra Leone where she and other prayer intercessors are praying in a vision for the Bo Tabernacle of Worship and for a Conservatory of Sacred/Divine Music.  Please stand with us in prayer. Between December 5, 2017 – March 21, 2018, November 2019, and April 2020; and again between June – November 2022, Dr. Edwards returned to Sierra Leone to help establish the Tabernacle of Worship and Conservatory of Sacred Music at Bo.…..You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. (John 15:16).