I am a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. Before that, I was a professor at Harvard University for 8 years. I earned my Ph.D. (2010) and Masters of Arts degrees (2006) in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and a Bachelor of Science degree (2004) from Georgia Institute of Technology where I majored in History, Technology and Society. My research and writing explores how police abuse, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of the drug trade naturalize disease, disability, and premature death for urban residents of color, who are often seen as expendable by “polite” society. Theoretically, my research lies at the nexus of critical medical and political anthropology, African American studies, and emerging scholarship on disability. I combine these literatures to show how violence and injury play a central role in the daily lives of Black urban populations. I have explored these diverse themes in Anthropological Theory, Current Anthropology, Disability Studies Quarterly, Transition, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power as well as my books.
My publications reflect a commitment to the comprehensive methodological repertoire that anthropology makes available. Much of my writing employs careful and deliberate description rather than esoteric theory to ensure that my findings are comprehensible to a broad range of intellectuals, experts, college students, and curious readers. The prevailing theoretical concern embedded in my research centers on the institutional forms and objects that open the way for political transformation. My scholarship is expressly dedicated to such an orientation. Each of my projects, in its own way, uses experiences of violence, debilitating injury, and/or death to examine the stereotypes and prejudices embedded in narratives about inner-city violence.
I have been awarded a number of prestigious fellowships for my research, some of which include: Cultural Anthropology grants from the National Science Foundation as well as the Wenner Gren Foundation, The Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a visiting fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, a Ford Foundation Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Research Council of the National Academies, and the Du Bois-Mandela-Rodney Post-Doctoral fellowship from the University of Michigan.
I currently live in Princeton, New Jersey with my wife and my daughter.
@SimonBalto @prisonculture When we had our event a couple years ago, I liked what you said about putting your hope in social movements and activist communities…rather than hoping institutions will recognize their mistakes & transform themselves.
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