MEMBERS
DIRECTOR: Natalie P. Byfield, Ph.D.
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: Maretta McDonald
RESEARCH ASSISTANT: Christian Merchan
RESEARCH ASSISTANT/LAB MANAGER: Meischa Sineno
DIRECTOR: Natalie P. Byfield
BIO
I am a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. I work in the area of cultural sociology. My research is interdisciplinary; it is broadly concerned with hegemony, specifically the relationship between knowledge and power in the construction and reproduction of racial inequalities in the modern western world and the social justice response to them. I center the subjugation of blackness and racial capitalism in my examinations of oppression and inequalities. I write about the construction of knowledge and power relationships in the languages, media systems, technologies, and research methodologies that occur in the institutions of policing, journalism, the social sciences, and higher education.
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: Maretta McDonald
BIO
Maretta McDonald is a Louisiana BOR/SREB doctoral fellow and PhD Candidate at Louisiana State University. Her primary research interests are racial inequality, criminology, family, gender, and public policy. She earned her Master’s Degree from Southeastern Louisiana University in Applied Sociology. Ms. McDonald is currently researching the impact of racism and Black expressivity on various topics such as: enforcement for child support, pop culture, and social movements, specifically Blue Lives Matter.
RESEARCH ASSISTANT: Christian Merchan
BIO
Christian Merchan is a M.A. candidate in the Criminology & Justice program in the department of Sociology & Anthropology at St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y. Through the McNair Scholars Program, he began research on police surveillance, the reproduction of racial inequality in law enforcement practices, and data analysis. Christian’s research currently includes using framing analysis to examine, based on African American cases, the existence of a singular, general framework used to represent killings by law enforcement. He questions the appropriateness of this framework and its possible applications in Latinx communities.
RESEARCH ASSISTANT/LAB MANAGER: Meischa Sineno
BIO