Anita L. Allen

Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy

  • Privacy Law, Theory and Values

  • Legal Theory

  • Contemporary Ethics and Bioethics

  • Mental Illness

  • Accountability

  • Race Relations

  • Gender and the Law

Website

Regina Austin

William A. Schnader Professor of Law Emeritus Director, Penn Program on Documentaries & the Law

  • Torts & Insurance

  • Law & Cultural Studies

  • Minority Legal Feminism

  • Economic Discrimination

  • Documentaries and the Law

  • Visual Legal Advocacy (Production)

Website

Herman Beavers

Julie Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt President’s Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies,

  • 20th Century African American Literary and Cultural studies

  • Jazz Studies

  • African American poetry and poetics

  • Gender Studies

  • Science and literature

  • Medicine and literature

Mary Frances Berry

Geraldine R. Segal Professor Emerita of American Social Thought Professor of History and Africana Studies

  • African American History

  • History of American Law

  • History of Law and Social Policy

Website

Gregory Bisson

Assistant Professor of Medicine

  • Infectious Diseases

  • Patient-Oriented Research

  • HIV

  • International Health

Website

Vaughn A. Booker

George E. Doty, Jr. & Lee Spelman Doty Presidential Associate Professor of Africana Studies

African American Religions



Black Religious and Spiritual Authority



Religion and Popular Music



Religion, Irreverence, and Comedy



Religion and Civil Rights / Black Freedom



Religion and Intersectionality

Kathleen Brown

David Boies Professor of History

  • History of Race and Gender

  • History of Slavery and Abolition

  • History of Race Relations

  • Atlantic History

  • History of Women

  • History of Sexuality

  • U.S. History

Website

J. Margo Brooks Carthon

Tyson Family Endowed Term Chair for Gerontological Research Associate Professor of Nursing

  • History of race and illness (Early 20th Century)

  • Health disparities

  • Healthcare workforce diversity

  • Nursing organization and minority health outcomes

  • Health and social policy

Website

Lorene Cary

Senior Lecturer in English

  • Fiction writing

  • Creative Non-fiction writing

  • Memoir writing

  • Education; urban education; alternative education

  • Underground Railroad

  • African-American history

 

Website

Camille Z. Charles

Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Faculty Director of the Office of Penn First Plus, On leave for AY 2024-2025

  • Urban inequality

  • Racial attitudes and intergroup relations

  • Racial residential segregation

  • Minorities in higher education

  • Racial identity

Website

Marcia Chatelain

Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies, Africana Studies Undergraduate Chair

Angela Duckworth

Christoher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology

  • Self-control grit achievement psychology character

  • Quantitative research methods

Website

Richard Estes

Emeritus Professor

  • International and Comparative Social Development

  • Strategic and Long Term Planning

  • Social Indicators

  • Social Reporting

Website

Harvey Friedman

Professor of Medicine

Cell and Molecular Biology



 

Website

Vivian Gadsden

William T. Carter Professor in Child Development and Education Director, National Center on Fathers and FamiliesAssociate Director, National Center on Adult Literacy

  • Cultural and social factors affecting learning and literacy across the life-course and within families,

  • Intergenerational learning

  • Relationships between literacy in families and issues of culture, race, gender, and poverty in diverse learning contexts

  • Interconnectedness among families' political, cultural, and social histories and racialized identities

Website

Susan Gennaro

Professor of Nursing

Physiologic mechanisms which may herald preterm birth


 

Daniel Q. Gillion

Julie Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt Presidential Distinguished Professor of Political Science

  • Racial and Ethnic Politics, Political Behavior, Public Opinion

  • Judicial Politics

  • The American Presidency

  • Questions of political participation

  • Institutional influences on citizens' behavior

  • Governmental responsiveness to citizens' concerns.

Website

Marie Gottschalk

Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor of Political Science

  • Criminal justice

  • Health policy

  • U.S. political economy

  • Organized labor

  • Welfare state

  • Comparative politics of public policy

Website

Kathleen Hall

Associate Professor of Education and Anthropology

  • Immigration, race relations, and education

  • Citizenship, cultural politics, and national incorporation

  • Class, socialization and social stratification Social theory

Website

Michael Hanchard

Gustave C. Kuemmerle Professor of Africana Studies

  • Comparative Politics (Nationalism, Race and Ethnicity, Social Movements, Political Culture)

  • Africana Studies

  • Latin American Studies

  • Political Theory (Citizenship, Comparative Political Theory)

Website

Ira Harkavy

Barbara and Edward Netter Director Netter Center for Community Partnerships

Urban University-Community-School partnerships



 

Website

Kelly Harris

Sr. Staff Director Lecturer

John L. Jackson Jr.

Richard Perry University Professor of Communication and Anthropology Professor of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania Provost

  • Ethnographic Film and Visual Studies

  • Race Theory

  • Globalization, Transnationalism, and Diaspora

  • Media Anthropology

  • Urban Studies

  • Cultural Studies

  • Performance Theory

  • Popular Culture

Website

Loretta Sweet Jemmott

Professor Emerita of Nursing Director of the Center for Health Disparities Research

  • Designing and evaluating interventions to reduce HIV risk-associated sexual behaviors

  • Health outcomes research including strategies to reduce other behavior-linked health problems, e.g. cancer (smoking), heart disease

Website

Olivia Kerr

Olivia’s research explores the contours of twentieth-century African American women’s lives through archival analyses. Foundationally, Olivia is interested in Black life within the early-to-mid twentieth century United States and the intracommunal dynamics within the Black public sphere. More broadly, she parses through the tangible and epistemic manifestations of Blackness, gender, class, and sexuality during the period--specifically regarding African American women. Her archival analyses draw primarily from written and print archives. Olivia's social historical work interrogates and highlights the interior lives of African American women by employing a historical methodological approach influenced by Black Feminist Epistemologies, Black queer theory, and a decoloniality lens.



Olivia is happy to speak to prospective students and/or those interested in her research.

Hans-Peter Kohler

Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography, Department of Sociology Research Associate, Population Studies Center University of Pennsylvania

  • Fertility and Related Behaviors in Both Developing and Developed Countries

  • Social Interactions and AIDS-related Behavior in Africa

Website

Shiriki Kumanyika

Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology in Biostatistics and Epidemiology Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics

  • Obesity Epidemiology and Prevention

  • Childhood Obesity

  • Global Obesity Epidemic

  • Food Marketing

  • Food and Nutrition Policy

  • Health Disparities

  • Systems Sciences

Website

William Labov

Professor of Linguistics

  • Frequency Studies

  • Reading and narrative

  • African American Vernacular English

Website

Andrew Lamas

Lecturer, Urban Studies Program Lecturer, School of Social Policy and Practice

Website

Ian MacMillan

The Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

  • Organizational Competence

  • New Venture Management and Entrepreneurship

 

Website

Ann Mayer

Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics

  • Comparative constitutional law

  • Human rights and globalization

  • International human rights law

  • Law in the contemporary middle east

  • Women’s international human rights

Website

Keisha-Khan Y. Perry

Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor of Africana Studies, Africana Studies Graduate Chair

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.

Edmund J. and Louise Kahn Term Professor of Music

  • African-American and American music

  • Jazz

  • Cultural studies

  • Popular music

  • Film studies

  • Historiography

 

Website

Timothy Rebbeck

Professor of Epidemiology

  • Identifying and characterizing cancer genes

  • The relationship of allelic variation of cancer genes with cancer occurrence and cancer outcomes

  • The role of cancer genes in cancer etiology and outcomes in the context of the demographic, biochemical, environmental, and physiological risk factors

Adolph Reed

Professor of Political Science Emeritus

  • American and African American politics and political thought

  • Urban politics

  • American Political Development

Website

Marc Ridgell (They/Them)

They are interested in how Black LGBTQ+ communities within U.S. cities experience life and organize against systemic violence and urban inequality. Marc is also interested in using ethnographic methods, as well as theories in visual culture and performance studies, to depict urban Black queer and trans life.

Dorothy E. Roberts

George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology, Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights Professor of Africana Studies, Director, Program on Race, Science, and Society

  • Race and Gender

  • Family

  • Criminal Justice

  • Bioethics

  • Sociology of Science

  • Critical Race Theory

Website

Timothy Rommen

Davidson Kennedy Professor in the College Professor of Music and Africana Studies, On leave for AY 2024-2025

  • Caribbean Studies

  • Coloniality/decoloniality

  • The political economy of music and sound

  • Creole musical formations

  • Tourism

  • Diaspora

  • Music and spirituality

  • The ethics of style

Website

David Roos

Professor of Biology

  • Genetic Analysis of Parasite Biology

  • Mechanisms of Drug Action and Resistance

 

Website

Barbara D. Savage

Geraldine R. Segal Professor Emerita of American Social Thought Professor Emerita of Africana Studies

  • Twentieth Century African American history

  • History of American religious and social reform movements

  • History of the relationship between media and politics

Website

Diana Slaughter-Defoe

Constance E. Clayton Professor Emerita in Urban Education

  • Urban education

  • Primary education

  • Parenting and child development

  • Home/school partnerships

Website

Howard Stevensen

Constance Clayton Professor of Urban Education

  • African-American psychology

  • At-risk youth and high-risk boys

  • Family and parental engagement

  • Racial integration and re-segregation

Website

Robert Vitalis

Professor of Political Science

  • Race and American International Relations Theory

  • African-American Internationalist Thought

  • The Political and Cultural Economy of the World Oil Industry

  • American Expansionism

  • History of International Relations and Development Studies

 

Website

Daniel Wagner

Professor, UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy Director, International Literacy Institute and National Center of Adult LiteracyHead, Program in International Education Development

  • Cross-Cultural Studies of Cognition and Socialization

  • Education in Developing Countries

Website

Heather A. Williams

Geraldine R. Segal Professorship in American Social Thought, Professor of Africana Studies,

  • Nineteenth Century African American History

  • History of Slavery in the American South

  • Jamaican Migrations

  • Race in American History

Website

Tukufu Zuberi

Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Africana Studies Interim Department Chair

  • Sociology

  • Human Rights

  • Global Africa

  • Africana Studies

  • Population and Health

  • Film

Website