Nadia E. Brown is Associate Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at Purdue University where she specializes in American politics with a distinct focus on Black politics as well as women and politics. She is the author of Sisters in the Statehouse: Black Women and Legislative Decision Making (2014) with Oxford University Press. Dr. Brown is the author of numerous articles focusing on Black women’s politics.
W. Carson Byrd is Assistant Professor of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville. His research focuses on the experiences of racial and ethnic minority students in education and the intersection of social psychological processes and structural and cultural impediments to access and success in higher education; racial identity and intergroup processes in society; and the reproduction of race, difference, and inequality through scientific innovation such as genetics and genomics. He received his MS and PhD in Sociology from Virginia Tech.
Robert J. Durán is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, and his areas of research include race, crime and justice, social control, and resistance through the lens of ethnography. He is the author of Gang Life in Two Cities: An Insider’s Journey (2013) and his forthcoming book is The Gang Paradox: Inequalities and Miracles on the U.S.-Mexico Border, both published by Columbia University Press.
Sarah Allen Gershon is Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University. She received her PhD from Arizona State University in 2008. Dr. Gershon’s research interests include media and politics, gender politics, and race and ethnicity. Her research has been published in several academic journals, including Political Communication; Political Research Quarterly; the Journal of Women, Politics and Policy; Social Science Quarterly, and the Journal of Politics.
Lonnie Hannon III is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology/Sociology at Tuskegee University. As a part of his personal mission, Dr. Hannon is focused on helping his students achieve their most positive selves via collective empowerment and self-determination. His research examines structural inequality, neighborhood disadvantage, and health disparities from a political-economy perspective. His research findings have informed numerous organizations, policy-makers, and publications on methods of improving economic outcomes among low-income residents. Dr. Hannon teaches statistics, urban sociology, and introduction to sociology.
Mosi Adesina Ifatunji is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Fellow at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests are in race, culture, biology, and social stratification. His research employs various comparisons between African Americans and Black immigrants, not only to document important and increasingly dynamic population trends, but to isolate the role of social context and practice in the process of racialization and the manufacture of larger trends in social stratification. He uses this quasi-experimental design, which he calls the ‘black ethnic comparative,’ to hold ‘racialized physical features’ constant while allowing social, political, and historical context to vary in important ways. Ultimately, this design holds unique potential for improving our understanding of how race, culture, and biology contribute to social meaning and stratification in society (http://www.ifatunji.info).
Michael P. Jeffries is Associate Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College. He is the author of Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America (Stanford University Press, 2013), and Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop (University of Chicago Press, 2011). He holds a PhD from Harvard University, and is a contributor at The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and The Guardian.
Tomás R. Jiménez is Associate Professor of Sociology and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. His research and writing focus on immigration, assimilation, social mobility, and ethnic and racial identity. He is finishing his second book, tentatively titled Strangers to Each Other: How Immigration and Assimilation Change Everyone. The book examines how established individuals (people who are U.S.-born of U.S.-born parents) adjust to immigration-driven change. His first book, Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity (University of California Press, 2010) draws on interviews and participant observation to understand how uninterrupted Mexican immigration influences the ethnic identity of later-generation Mexican Americans. The book was awarded the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Latinos/as Section Distinguished Book Award.
Maria S. Johnson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. Using qualitative methods and critical race and gender theories, she examines the intersection of race, gender, and class discourse within Black women’s narratives, daughter-father relationships, fatherhood studies, and public policies. She is completing a book manuscript on Black daughter-father relationships and has published works on the topic in various outlets, including Gender & Society. Maria Johnson earned a PhD in Public Policy and Sociology from the University of Michigan and a BA in History from Hampton University.
Desmond S. King is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Nuffield College. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of many articles and over ten books, including Fed Power: How Finance Wins with Lawrence Jacobs (2015), Sterilized by the State: Race, Eugenics, and Population Policy in Twentieth Century North America with Randall Hansen (2013), Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama’s America with Rogers M. Smith (2011), Separate and Unequal: African Americans and the U.S. Federal Government (2007), The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation (2005), and Making Americans: Race, Immigration and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy (2001). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2014, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2015.
Xolela Mangcu is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town. He was most recently the Oppenheimer Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, and has held fellowships at The Brookings Institution, Rockefeller Foundation, Harvard Kennedy School, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He obtained his PhD in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. His dissertation was on Harold Washington’s legacy for Chicago. Mangcu is the author and co-author of nine books including Biko: A Biography, winner of the 2015 UCT Meritorious Book Award. Mangcu is a widely read columnist and commentator on South African affairs. South Africa’s Sunday Times has described him as “possibly the most prolific public intellectual in South Africa.”
Rogers M. Smith is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean for the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, and Chair of the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism. He is the author or co-author of many articles and seven books, including Political Peoplehood (2015), Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama’s America with Desmond S. King (2011), Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership (2003), and Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (1997). Civic Ideals received six best book prizes from four professional associations and was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History. Smith was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2011.
James M. Thomas is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi. His research centers on historical and contemporary formations and articulations of race and racism. His research has been featured in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Ethnicities, Ethnography, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. His monograph, Working to Laugh (Lexington Press, 2015), analyzes the degree to which prevailing norms of race, class, and gender undergird the social construction of urban nightlife settings.
Kim M. Williams is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. She received her PhD from Cornell University and taught from 2000-2010 at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her first book, Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America (2006), explains how a small group of “multiracial” activists spurred a big change in how the Census counts by race. She has received major fellowships/awards from the U.S. Department of State, the Ford Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute. She served on the U.S. Census Advisory Committee for the African-American Population from 2007-2011. Her current research focuses on black-immigrant relations and political coalition building.
Alford A. Young, Jr. is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan. He also holds an appointment in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies. His primary research has been on low-income African American men. Young has published The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances (Princeton University Press 2004) and various articles on the worldviews and ideologies of these men. He is completing two manuscripts; one entitled, “From the Edge of the Ghetto: African Americans and the World of Work,” and another that examines how African American men who were reared in poverty but who engaged extreme upward mobility as young adults learned to navigate race and class-based constraints.
