Her dissertation examines how Black and Afro-descendent domestic workers have been central to the most progressive elements of the labor movement in the U.S. and how the gendered antiblack violence of slavery’s afterlife shapes their work experiences and fight for survival. Through semi-structured interviews, Black feminist grounded ethnography, media analysis, and oral histories of Black women domestic workers’ political organizing practices and work experiences in Boston, New York City, and D.C., this research investigates how Black and African descendent domestic workers and domestic workers organizations infuse radical care work into community building efforts to mobilize support at the grassroots and federal levels for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and other struggles for workers’ protections and dignity. This research seeks to understand how Black women’s intersectional organizing around care work strengthens Black radicalism within the mainstream labor movement and re-envisions critical paths toward Black emancipation.

In connection with this research, she is currently an intern with the Massachusetts Coalition of Domestic Workers and a volunteer with Matahari Women Workers’ Center, and was a research analyst at Social Action for Health in East London.

Venus holds an M.A. in Medicine, Health, and Society from Vanderbilt University and a B.A. in political science, African American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from the  University of California, Irvine. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Mellon World Studies Interdisciplinary Project, the Labor Action and Research Network, the Nichols Humanitarian Fund, the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst, the Graduate School at UMass Amherst, the Center for Global Work and Employment at Rutgers, and the Center for Employment Equity at UMass Amherst, to name a few. Her work has been published in Sociology Spectrum.

Jennifer’s master’s research focused on how Jim Crow laws—and their formal dissolution in the 1960s—shaped labor solidarities. Witnessing workplace surveillance, racism within and outside of labor organizing, and legal restrictions on worker activism in her own workplace cemented her interest in studying legal constraints to worker organizing on and off the job.

Jennifer received her B.A. from the University of Chicago in 2015. As a graduate student, she has enjoyed teaching undergraduate students in the history department and through the Southern Oral History Program. Her pedagogical interests extend beyond the college level, and she has been lucky to also work with North Carolina educators and teachers on K-12 curriculum development for U.S. history.

Her dissertation, “Care in Crisis: Black Women and the Politics of Labor in Atlanta, 1965-1985,” examines how working-class Black women organized themselves in domestic worker unions, welfare rights organizations, and as prisoners and mothers to challenge the politics of austerity and to advocate for policies that would value both their waged and unwaged caring labor. Her work has been supported by the National Center for Institutional Diversity and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan.

Eshe is a recipient of the 2021 Reed Fink Award in Southern Labor History from Georgia State University. She holds an M.A. in History from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in African American Studies from Yale University.

Her dissertation, “Liberation for All: Recovering the Lasting Legacy of the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), 1968-2012,” offers the first comprehensive study of the group and traces the intellectual genealogies of a “women of color” feminist praxis rooted in the Women’s Liberation Movement(s) of the 1970s and still used today for political activity. Through an organizational approach, Wilson explores the intellectual history of the TWWA. Wilson’s previous activism with Black women survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault continues to shape her interest in social justice through the lens of intersectionality.

Drawing on political speeches, newsletters, articles, pamphlets, and travel logs, “Liberation for all” examines Black women’s contributions to women of color groups in the U.S. from the 1960s to the present. She argues that members’ theorization of the Third World Woman allowed for a successful multiracial feminist coalition that expanded nationally and internationally. By centering working-class women’s issues related to reproductive health, socio-economic disparities, and state violence, the TWWA coalesced Black, Latina, Asian, and Indigenous women under one collective.

At UT, she led the anti-racism committee in her home department, served as the 2019-2020 Graduate Research Assistant for the Institute for Historical Studies, and was a research fellow for the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy between the years of 2017-2020. Her dissertation has been supported by the Sallie Bingham Center; the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics; Smith College Libraries; and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, among others.

Before Yale, she completed a master’s degree in Environmental Justice at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. There she researched how African American college students navigated the outdoor recreational landscape. In 2017, she won the Clyde Woods Prize for best graduate paper in Black Geographies, for her paper “Build A Wall Around Hyde Park: Race, Space and Policing on the Southside of Chicago 1950-2010,” which is currently under review for The Antipode. You can access her article on Police Violence and Environmental Justice here.

She is the author of the essay “Islands of Freedom: The struggle to desegregate Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountain National Park 1936-1941” in the forthcoming edited collection Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, Environmental History.

Her dissertation, Effects of Contradictory Signals on Post-Prison Labor Market Outcomes, draws on a field experiment conducted in five states and 100 qualitative interviews with employers and formerly incarcerated men to examine whether and how certifications obtained in prison programs reduce stigma and discrimination experienced by returning citizens in the labor market. Her dissertation has received an award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Corrections and Sentencing and is supported by the National Science Foundation’s Sociology Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant.

Sadé’s dissertation research is informed by her direct service to incarcerated youth. She spent three years preparing young men in a juvenile correctional facility for reentry through financial and career goal planning and resume-building activities in addition to other activities on fatherhood, education, and health and wellness. Sadé continues work and advocacy surrounding issues of incarceration and reentry through her involvement with local reentry organizations and coalitions.

Sadé received her bachelor’s degree in Criminology and master’s degree in Sociology at the Ohio State University in 2015 and 2017, respectively. She is a Ruth D. Peterson Fellow of the American Society of Criminology, a Center on Democracy and Organizing Fellow, and an Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ Doctoral Summit Scholar

Khater’s dissertation sits at the juncture of carceral state studies, social history, cultural studies, and black feminist theory. Using a broad range of archival sources—including handwritten letters, fire insurance maps, jail records, escape notices, bureaucratic correspondence, newspaper articles, court dockets, photographs, and architectural drawings — Khater’s work centers black women’s attempts to reclaim social identities in the “free world.” Her project identifies the act of running away, or transgressively moving through space, as both a rhetoric of protest and an articulation of desire. In this way, “‘Unable to Find Any Trace of Her’” renders alternative narratives of insurgency that acknowledge how kinship, grief, longing, and loss were always bound up with resistive action.

Khater’s work has been supported by the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration; the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition; and the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South, among others. She earned her B.A. in History and French from North Carolina State University in 2015.

In addition to his sociological training, Joss has developed his analysis of state violence against trans people based on his own experiences doing trans prisoner advocacy since 2013.  He has been a regular volunteer with organizations in the Bay Area, including the Transgender Gender variant Intersex Justice Project, and most recently served as a core collective member with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.  His relationships with organizers and currently incarcerated people motivate him to understand changes in carceral control and how people resist it.

Joss believes that engaged scholarship is a politically powerful tool.  To this end, he supports organizations in designing and implementing their own research, leads community workshops based on his data, and has presented his findings to California government officials at the city, county, and state level.  He is currently collaborating with a community organizer on the first national research looking at transgender women of color’s experiences in the labor market.

As an urban environmentalist and political ecologist, Corbin examines the relationships between society and nature within the built environment by investigating the concept of the green city within the context of the United States. Her dissertation focuses on how the relationships between race, class, and access to green space have changed from 1960—prior to the Civil Rights Acts—to 2019, after Oakland, California began establishing its sustainability agenda and during an intensifying gentrification process.

Corbin questions how environmental policies and practices in green cities are impacting the lived experiences of low-income residents and communities of color and their access to public green spaces today and what that could mean for future populations living in green cities.

As the chair of the City of Oakland Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission (PRAC) Corbin serves her community through civic engagement by researching, reporting, and making recommendations to City Council on Park and Recreation policies and as the PRAC liaison to three Recreation Advisory Councils, the local community park stewards.

Corbin is also an executive committee member of the California Outdoor Engagement Coalition focused on getting youth who reflect the overall demographics of California into the outdoors by providing transformational experiences.

Jasmine previously served as the Justice Fellow at the Field Foundation of Illinois where she assisted with the grant-making process, she evaluated grants, conducted site visits, and made recommendations for funding in the Justice portfolio. She was a UChicago Urban Doctoral Fellow and also part of the University of Pennsylvania Predissertation Fellowship for the Summer Institute on Inequality. Jasmine has worked to improve programming and resources available for graduate students of color at her university. For three years she served as a Higher Education Intern for Diversity and Inclusion at UChicagoGRAD and was part of the leadership of the Diversity Advisory Board at UChicagoGRAD. During her time as a higher education intern, Jasmine was one of the founders and lead organizers of the Transcending Boundaries Research Symposium held at the University of Chicago in 2016 and 2017.  She was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and participated in the Leadership Alliance. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Politics and Justice Studies from Claflin University in 2013 and a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2016.