Vanessa Agard-Jones

Vanessa Agard-Jones is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, where she serves on the Executive Council of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality and is affiliated with both the Institute for Research in African American Studies and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. She earned her PhD from the joint program in Anthropology and French Studies at New York University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia's Society of Fellows in the Humanities. From 2014 to 2016 Agard-Jones was on the faculty at Yale University. She is a member of the Social Text Collective and is the former managing editor of two journals: Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism and Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society. Outside of academe, Agard-Jones is the former coordinator of Oakland's Prison Activist Resource Center and the former Board Chair of New York City's Audre Lorde Project. She taught in San Quentin State Prison's Postsecondary Education Program, and for three years in Atlanta Public Schools.