Lucy Britt is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, specializing in political theory. Her dissertation research focuses on the politics of commemoration and loss as well as normative issues surrounding memorials, monuments, and representations of historical violence in the political landscape. She is currently conducting research on Whiteness and emotions in politics.
Tehama Lopez Bunyasi is an assistant professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. Her research is grounded in conflicts around race and ethnicity in the United States with specializations in racial attitudes and ideologies, structural inequality, Whiteness, Latino racial identity, and political behavior. Dr. Lopez Bunyasi is currently preparing a book manuscript, Breaking the Contract: The Political Possibilities of Seeing White Privilege. She is likewise the author (with Candis Watts-Smith) of Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter.
Emily R. Cabaniss is an associate professor of Sociology at Sam Houston State University. Her research has been guided by a broad interest in the reproduction of inequality and efforts to bring about social change. More specifically, she is interested in how people—interacting together—shape, reinforce, resist, and challenge structural inequalities. To date, her research has focused primarily on how these processes manifest among immigrants, especially those involved in social movements. She teaches courses on race and ethnicity, immigration, and gender inequalities.
Kirsten Matoy Carlson is an associate professor of Law and adjunct associate professor of Political Science at Wayne State University. Her interdisciplinary, empirical research focuses on legal and legislative advocacy by Indian nations and indigenous groups to reform federal Indian law and policy effectively. It has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Law and Social Science Program and the Levin Center at Wayne Law. Carlson earned a PhD in Political Science and a JD from The University of Michigan. She previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Diana E. Murphy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, received a NSF dissertation research grant, and was a Fulbright Scholar in New Zealand.
Jelisa S. Clark earned her PhD in Applied Sociology from the University of Louisville in 2017. She is currently an adjunct assistant professor at Fayetteville State University. During her graduate studies Dr. Clark was the recipient of the Southern Regional Educational Board Doctoral Fellowship. Her research and teaching are focused on the intersection of race and gender in education. She is a co-author of Empowering Men of Color on Campus: Building Student Community in Higher Education, which examines how Men of Color negotiate college through their participation in a male success program. She is currently writing a book which examines controlling images used to imagine and engage with Black boys in urban education.
Loren Collingwood is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. His research interests include American politics, political behavior, public policy, race and ethnic politics, immigration, and political methodology. His work has appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, Political Behavior, and Political Psychology, and other peer reviewed journals. He is the author of two books, titled Campaigning in a Racially Diversifying America: When and How Cross-Racial Electoral Mobilization Works, and Sanctuary Cities: The Politics of Refuge (co-authored with Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien).
Shelby A. Coury is a Humanities teacher at The Montessori School of Raleigh. She has two BAs in Anthropology and Sociology from North Carolina State University in 2015. Her research and teaching have focused primarily on inequality, conflict, peace, and tolerance. She teaches interdisciplinary courses that connect history, anthropology, sociology, and social studies that engage students in holistic and critical thinking.
Laurel R. Davis-Delano is a professor of Sociology at Springfield College. Davis-Delano’s research is focused on inequality and injustice associated with race, gender, and sexual orientation. Most of this scholarship involves study of categories of people with more power, including Whites, men, and heterosexual people. Research publications include those focused on Native American mascots, public displays of heterosexual identity, and the association between masculinity and sport. Davis-Delano was recently a member of a team that engaged in research for the Reclaiming Truth Project. Davis-Delano’s current research is focused on the degree to which non-Native people are exposed to representations of Native Americans and the content of these representations, as well as White perceptions of Native identity.
Arianne E. Eason is an assistant professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research draws broadly on developmental, social, and cultural psychology to examine how features of our social and cultural context shape peoples’ attitudes and behaviors in ways that work to reify existing inequalities and stagnate change. From this perspective, her current research program aims to unpack three processes: 1) How racially segregated environments influence interracial relations; 2) How the omission of contemporary representations of Native people influences biases toward the group; and 3) How the presence of wealth inequality influences infants’ evaluations and actions towards individuals. She also currently serves as a lead researcher for IllumiNative.
Emily P. Estrada is an assistant professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Oswego. She is interested in examining the way symbolic boundaries are created, reproduced, and challenged as they relate to immigrant, racial, and ethnic groups. She investigates both the institutional and cultural racialization of Latinx immigrants, focusing on the more subtle, implicit aspects of this process. Her scholarship focuses on public and private discourses surrounding the Latinx immigrant community broadly speaking, and on the institution of privatized immigration detention.
Danequa L. Forrest is a doctoral candidate in the Sociology PhD program at Louisiana State University. Her research focuses on health, race, and applied statistics. With training in both qualitative and quantitative research, her work is methodologically diverse. Her current dissertation project provides insight into the age at diagnosis of developmental disabilities and how it varies by race and sex.
Stephanie A. Fryberg, a member of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington State, is the University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her primary research focuses on how social representations of race, culture, and social class influence the development of self, stereotyping and prejudice, psychological well-being, and educational attainment. She provided testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs regarding the impact of racist stereotypes on Indigenous people, was lead psychologist on an Amicus Brief for Harjo v. Pro-Football, served as an expert witness in the Keepseagle v. U.S. Department of Agriculture class action lawsuit, and currently serves as the lead researcher for IllumiNative, a national research-based effort to shift the narrative about and decrease bias toward Native People.
Renee Galliher is a professor of Psychology at Utah State University. Her research is focused on identity development processes, emphasizing intersections of domains of identity within relational and cultural contexts. Using observational, self-report, and qualitative methodologies, she assesses ethnic identity, sexual identity, religious identity, professional identity, and other forms of identity across developmental transitions. Her work examines patterns of risk and resilience related to important family and peer relationships, as well as cultural influences and the impact of prejudice and discrimination. Dr. Galliher has served as editor of Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research and Associate Editor for the recently published Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development (wiley.com).
David M. Merolla is an associate professor of Sociology at Wayne State University Detroit, Michigan. He studies race and racism, sociology of education, and social psychology.
Heather A. O’Connell is an assistant professor in Sociology at Louisiana State University. She is a graduate from the Sociology PhD program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. O’Connell’s work centers on understanding race and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. She is particularly interested in the role of racial composition and history in shaping places and subsequent inequalities. She has contributed significantly to research on the legacy of slavery and its connections to contemporary Black-White inequality, as well as research on racial classification and its foundations in historical legal contexts.
Manuel Pastor is a distinguished professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California (USC) where he directs the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII). An economist by training, with a PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he is the inaugural holder of USC Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change. Pastor writes and speaks widely on issues including demographic change, economic inequality, community empowerment, immigrant justice, and social movements. His latest book is State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Means for America’s Future (2018).
Michael J. Saman is a visiting scholar at New York University, and has taught at Princeton University, UCLA, Brown University, and the College of William & Mary. He holds a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University, with interests including eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German literature and thought, and intersections of German and Africana intellectual history. Saman’s research appears in journals such as Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, Monatshefte, Goethe Yearbook, German Quarterly, and Savannah Review. He is preparing a book manuscript on classical German thought in Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, which has been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the W. E. B. Du Bois Center of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Jason P. Smith is a PhD candidate in the Sociology department at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. His research interests include race and racism, drug use, and police violence.
Tyler Steelman is a fifth year PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at UNC-Chapel Hill. His current research focuses on non-territorial forms of representation in the United States—namely, surrogate representation. He is also currently involved in an ongoing project developing a method for redistricting using ZIP codes as the building blocks for districts. This project was recently published in the Election Law Journal. His other work can be found in Interest Groups & Advocacy and The Monkey Cage.
Pamela Stephens is a PhD student in the Department of Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. Broadly, her research interests converge at the intersections of race, space, and governance. Her current research explores the role of redevelopment in the production of Black space in Los Angeles, further evaluating the influence of Black spatial and political practices in that process. Stephens holds a BA in urban studies from the University of California, Berkeley and a MA in urban and regional planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Emily Wager is a visiting assistant professor in the department of Political Science at the University of Houston. She received her PhD in Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2020 and specializes in American politics. In addition to understanding trends in American politics that we observe over time, Wager examines how race and inequality shape public opinion, political behavior, and public policy. Her recent publications include a co-authored volume, Converging on Truth: A Dynamic Perspective on Factual Debates in American Public Opinion, and an essay from her dissertation, entitled People Like Us?: How Mass Preferences are Shaped by Economic Inequality and Racial Diversity. Wager’s research has been funded by several grants, including a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant.
Hannah L. Walker is an assistant professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines the impact of the criminal justice system on American democracy with special attention to minority and immigrant communities. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and Political Behavior, among other outlets. She is the author of Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation and Race.
