JESSICA LYNN STEWART, PHD

Dr. Stewart is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Her research and teaching focus on race, place, and political economy; particularly the ways socioeconomic context and race intersect to influence public opinion and policy preferences. Professor Stewart is the author of Regional Blackness: Diverging African American Views on Racial Progress and Government Assistance, published in the National Political Science Review. Her most recent publication, Moving Up, Out, and Across the Country: Regional Differences in Causes of Neighborhood Change and its Effect on African Americans appears in the edited volume, Black Politics in Transition. Currently, she is working on a book project inspired by her dissertation. Tentatively titled, Are We There Yet?, it examines how geography and economic restructuring influenced American racial progress in the post-Civil Rights Movement era. Professor Stewart graduated from Denison University where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics. She also holds a Master of Science degree in Health Systems Management and completed an administrative fellowship at Mayo Clinic before pursuing a doctorate. Professor Stewart earned her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Prior to arriving at Emory, she completed the Anna Julia Cooper Center Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Wake Forest University.

TEMI B. ALAO

Temi Alao is a sociology doctoral student at Emory University. Prior to attending Emory, she completed her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Sociology at Rice University and her M.A. in Sociology at the University of Florida. Broadly, Temi’s research agenda examines racial and ethnic relations, immigration, political behavior, and social policy from both a domestic and a transnational lens. Her Master’s thesis explored the ways African immigrants’ diasporic identities shaped their understanding of US racial politics as well as their support for Black Lives Matter. Taking a more macro-level approach, Temi’s current work at Emory primarily explores the ways a racialized political economy—as well as the ideologies, cultures, and political interests tied to that economy— shape the lived realities of African Americans and African Imigrants in comparison to other racial and ethnic groups. Overall, Temi’s work aims to improve the lives of marginalized populations in the United States and abroad by highlighting the role of racial capitalism in shaping the micro-level (identity formations), meso-level (individual/collective political behaviors, social networks, inter- and intra-group relations) and macro-level (social inequities, policy decisions) processes of a society.