Jasmine L. Blanks Jones

Jasmine L. Blanks Jones is a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Research Scholar and a Dr. William Fontaine Fellow in Africana Studies.  As a dual PhD student in Education, Culture and Society, she is also a George and Alice S. Hill Fellow.  She graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Music Education and taught middle school music history and performance in Maryland.  Holding a Master of Public Policy degree from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Blanks Jones founded and served as Executive Director for B4 Youth Theatre, a Liberian NGO that grew out of a pilot of her Master’s thesis which was a prospectus on arts education.  Her research interests include global public health, arts education, youth civic engagement in education, African post-colonialism and diaspora migrations, African American colonialism and antebellum history.  Liberia is her primary research site where she engages in Participatory Action Research, Practitioner Inquiry, and critical ethnography.