SWS Congratulates Dr. Shannon Malone Gonzalez and Dr. Sofia Locklear – ASA-SWS Minority Fellows – Successful Ph.D. Defenses and New Tenure-Track Jobs!

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

Dr. 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. Gonzalez will soon receive her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Before her graduate work 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.

Dr. Shannon Malone Gonzalez has accepted a tenure-track position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill! Congratulations! 

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

Dr. 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 will soon graduate with her PhD from 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.

Dr. Sofia Locklear has accepted a tenure-track position at Western University in Canada! Congratulations! 

For More Information on the American Sociological Association (ASA) Minority Fellows Program, please go to this website: https://www.asanet.org/news-events/footnotes/jul-aug-2020/whats-new/congratulations-new-minority-fellows-announcing-mfp-cohort-47

The SWS-ASA Minority Fellows Liaisons:

MFP Liaisons

Brittany Battle (until 2022) Andrea Gómez Cervantes (until 2023)

battleb@wfu.edu                    gomezca@wfu.edu