Stephanie Jones

Stephanie Jones (she/her/hers) is currently a UC Presidential Postdoctoral Scholar at University of California, Riverside. Her work focuses on housing inequality as an anti-Black project in Oakland to understand both how housing is racialized and how Blackness is coded through housing. She theorizes dispossession within Black Geographies to better understand how Black experiences are spatialized. Jones builds a framework for Black Geographies as people are being displaced and reimagines a scholarly approach to studying housing and property. She argues meaningful social change requires understanding that current housing crises are shaped by historical anti-Black projects aimed at organizing space.

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Steph is originally from Oakland, California where she also conducted her dissertation work. Steph received her BA from the University of California, Merced. After receiving her BA, she worked in the non-profit sector for three years. She then earned her MA from Northern Illinois University. After leaving Illinois, she earned her PhD from the University of California, Irvine. At UCI, Steph participated in courses for both the Critical Theory and Race and Justice studies emphasis. She developed and created questions and challenges to the ideas of space and political economy through these studies. 

 

Steph’s research is shaped by over 15 years as both a scholar and community organizer. Because of her background and her expertise, she continues to passionately investigate the theoretical implications of how Black geographies inform the way scholars and advocates understand space as well as understanding the ways people experience these spaces.

 

As a teacher and mentor, Steph focuses on liberatory educational approaches through strategies rooted in critical pedagogy. As an award winning teacher, she works with her students while in critical dialogue by asking open ended questions. Her favorite classrooms are loud classrooms, where students have the opportunity to theorize and engage their own questions about the world. Steph knows each moment in the classroom is an opportunity to support students in interrogating how race, class, sexuality, gender and violence interconnect through larger structures in society. 

 

 

“We have to build the communities we deserve.” - Steph