Congratulations to the 2020 SWS-ASA Minority Fellows, Shannon Malone Gonzalez and Sofia Locklear!

Congratulations to the American Sociological Association (ASA) Minority Fellows Sponsored by SWS

Shannon Gonzalez

Photo of Shannon Malone Gonzalez

 

Shannon Malone Gonzalez (Sociologists for Women in Society MFP)
Graduate Institution: University of Texas at Austin

Shannon Malone Gonzalez is from Jackson, MS, where she graduated from Tougaloo College with her bachelor’s degree in English. She subsequently received her master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Nonprofit and NGO Leadership. Prior to becoming a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, Gonzalez spent several years working on issues around health, reproductive justice, and violence against women and girls of color in Mississippi. She has also worked in philanthropy to support local community organizations and promote foster youth involvement in state policies. Her interests are black feminist criminology and social policy. Her research incorporates an intersectional analysis into the study of police surveillance, criminalization, and violence. Gonzalez’s dissertation, “In Her Place: Black Women Redefining and Resisting Police Violence,” uses mixed-methods to interrogate the social conditions that shape and marginalize black women and girls’ lived experiences with police across cultural and institutional contexts. She is especially interested in understanding how police officers leverage institutional power to inflict gender-based and sexual violence against black women across social class. Gonzalez’s research is published in Gender & Society and forthcoming in Social Problems. Her work is supported by the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, and she is a W.K. Kellogg Community Leadership Fellow. Gonzalez enjoys long talks with her elders and long hikes in the rural South with family and friends.

Sofia Locklear

Photo of Sofia Locklear

 

Sofia Locklear (Sociologists for Women in Society MFP)
Graduate Institution: University of New Mexico

Sofia Locklear is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and a part of the vibrant urban Native community in Seattle, WA. She earned her BA in sociology from Seattle University, her MA in sociology from the University of New Mexico, and is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of New Mexico. Her dissertation explores the social construction of white identity among individuals in the Pacific Northwest who work with American Indian and Alaska Native issues and peoples through semi-structured, in-depth interviews. This project links white individual understandings of racial formation to the larger institutional systems that uphold and perpetuate oppressive ideologies for American Indian and Alaska Native people. Locklear’s broader research areas include the sociology of Indigenous Peoples; sociology of race and ethnicity; and the sociology of health, focusing on the intersections of colonialism and Native health outcomes. Locklear is an instructor at Seattle University and also works for a tribal epidemiology center assisting urban Indigenous communities across the country to showcase their knowledge and resilience. In her down time, Locklear provides care to her plants, tries to read for fun (but, somehow, it always ends up being something sociological), travels, and spends time with friends and relatives.

SWS congratulates all of the ASA-MFPs in 2020! Please view click HERE to see all the MFPs for 2020.