Senior Faculty Fellows
Charles Senteio
Associate Professor of Library and Information Science, Rutgers School of Communication and Information, Rutgers-New Brunswick
Research and teaching interests: Health Equity, Data Equity, AI Bias, Algorithmic Bias
Selected Publications:
Write It Like You See It: Detectable Differences in Clinical Notes By Race Lead To Differential Model Recommendations (2022). AIES 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society; The efficacy of health IT in supporting Black and Hispanic chronic disease patients: A Systematic Review (2022). Journal of Medical Internet Research; Sleep Disturbance and Strain Among Caregivers of Persons Living With Dementia (2021). Aging Neurosci, among others.
ISGRJ Project: Health Humanities, Communications, and Informatics Working Group, researching and coordinating future possibilities for a Data Equity Initiative at the School of Communication and Information and ISGRJ at Rutgers, supporting the RU HEAR committee, and developing programs and initiatives that will develop the Institute's Black Bodies, Black Health signature project.
Brittney Cooper
Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and Africana Studies, Rutgers–New Brunswick
Research and teaching interests: Black Women’s Intellectual History, Black Feminist Thought, Hip Hop Feminisms, Hip Hop Studies, Race and Gender Representation in Popular Culture, Digital Feminisms, and New Media
Selected Publications:
Stand Up: Ten Mighty Women Who Made a Change (Scholastic, 2022); Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood (co-author with Susana Morris and Chanel Craft Tanner -- Norton, 2021); Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (St. Martin’s, 2018) -- New York Times Bestseller, Best Book of 2018 from NPR, the Atlantic, Bustle, and many others; Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (University of Illinois Press, 2017) -- Winner of the Merle Curti Prize for Best Book in U.S. Intellectual History, Organization of American Historians, 2018, among others.
ISGRJ Project: Race and Gender Equity (R.A.G.E.) Lab: Black Feminism in the Public Sphere. A multi-modal research incubator committed to pursuing feminist research questions related to the intellectual production and social thriving of Black women and girls.
Enobong (Anna) Branch
Professor of Sociology, Rutgers–New Brunswick and Senior Vice President for Equity at Rutgers
Research and teaching interests: Labor, work, and the historical roots and contemporary underpinnings of racial and gender inequality
Selected Publications: Author of Opportunity Denied: Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work (2011) and coauthor of Black in America: The Paradox of the Color Line (2020)
ISGRJ Project: Black Bodies, Black Health: Imagining a Just Racial Future. A one-year research project, supported by a $725,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that brings together cross-disciplinary groups of experts to explore structural racism in service of creating equitable health outcomes.
Keith Michael Green
Associate Professor of English and Communication, Africana Studies, Rutgers–Camden
- Research and Teaching Interests: African American literature, Afro-Cuban culture, 19th-century American literature, autobiography, narratives of black captivity, speculative fiction and disability studies
- Selected Publications: Bound to Respect: Antebellum Narratives of Black Imprisonment, Servitude, and Bondage: 1816–1861 (University of Alabama Press, 2015, recipient of the Elizabeth Agee Prize for “outstanding scholarship in the field of American literary studies”) and co-editor with Sarada Balagopalan and Cati Coe of Diverse Unfreedoms: The Afterlives and Transformations of Post-Transatlantic Bondages (Routledge, 2019)
- ISGRJ Project: Research on Black Transnationalism & Amistad Conversations, a series of cross-campus conversations assessing the viability of formalizing a Rutgers University affiliation with the historic Amistad Commission, whose efforts under Stephanie J. Harris will ensure the teaching of Black history in New Jersey schools
- Research Highlight: 2024 Rutgers University Academic Affairs Research Council Grant for the project “Saved but Enslaved: Briton Hammon, Hannah Hovey, and the Earliest Black and Indigenous Members of Plymouth’s First Church, 1708-1783.” The two-year project will contribute to scholarship that shows slavery was indeed present in colonial New England. Through estate and church records, Green will also produce an unprecedented recording of Black and Indigenous membership in the Pilgrims’ founding American church.
Stacy Hawkins
Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School
Research and Teaching Interests: Intersection of law and diversity, employment law and diversity, higher education and diversity, constitutional law, and employment law
Selected Publications: Published in the Fordham Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Michigan Journal of Race and Law, UCLA Law Review Discourse, and the Columbia Journal of Race and Law, among others
ISGRJ Project: An applied research project exploring whether the beneficial features and pedagogical model associated with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) can be successfully replicated by a historically white institution (HWI) in a manner that leads to improved academic achievement for Black and other targeted high-risk students attending HWIs.
Jamie Lew
Associate Professor of Sociology, Global Urban Studies/Urban Systems, Rutgers–Newark
Research and Teaching Interests: Sociology of education, immigration, international migration, and race and ethnicity, exploring intersections of immigration and race particularly in relation to education for migrant youths in urban space
Selected Publications: Asian Americans in Class:Charting the Achievement Gap Among Korean American Youth (Teachers College Press, 2006); Asian American Children and Poverty: Multicultural Education Context (Banks, J., Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education, SAGE publications, 2013), among others
ISGRJ Project: An exploration of how urban refugee families and children negotiate their sense of belonging and placemaking in cities in the U.S. and abroad.
Luis Rivera
Associate Professor of Psychology, Director of the Rutgers Implicit Social Cognition (RISC) Lab, Rutgers–Newark
Research and Teaching Interests: Implicit social cognitive processes underlying stereotyped attitudes and their shaping of the self, identity, and health of stigmatized individuals
Selected Publications: The detrimental effect of affirming masculinity on judgments of gay men (2018); Incarceration and health of sexual and gender minority persons (American Journal of Public Health, 108(8), 994-999, 2018), among others
ISGRJ Project: An investigation of whether white individuals express implicit and explicit biases to down-regulate collective guilt and protect their group image. Findings from this project will have implications for how to improve racial justice education and, in turn, reduce implicit and explicit biases.
Salamishah Tillet
Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing, Associate Director of the Clement Price Institute, Founding Director of New Arts Justice Initiative and Director of Express Newark at Rutgers University–Newark.
2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, 2020 Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction fellowship, and contributing critic at large for The New York Times
Research and Teaching Interests: African American studies, 20th- and 21st-century African American literature, slavery within post-Civil Rights America, racial democracy, African diaspora arts film, popular music, cultural studies, and feminist theory
Selected Publications: Author of several books including In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece (Abrams Press, 2021); Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Duke University Press, 2012); and All The Rage: Mississippi Goddam and The World Nina Simone Made (forthcoming).
ISGRJ Project: In February 2022, Rutgers–Newark will host Black Portraiture[s] VII: Play & Performance, a three-day conference that convenes scholars, artists, and activists. As part of the conference, the New Arts Justice Initiative will host exhibitions that centralize Black Girlhood, including a show at the Paul Robeson Gallery in Express Newark that meditates on themes of Black Girlhood through the eyes of Black women/girl photographers.
