Scholar and activist Michelle Jones's work excavates the collateral consequences of criminal convictions for people directly impacted by mass incarceration. Join the Pozen Center and the Human Rights Lab for her evening lecture, which will frame these topics in the context of the university setting: academia's role in dismissing the ability of marginalized peoples, particularly the formerly incarcerated, to acquire and share knowledge. Cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture and the Mass Incarceration Working Group. This event is backed by the Office of the Provost.
Jones is a third-year doctoral student in New York University’s American Studies program. She published and presented her research findings during the twenty years she was incarcerated, disrupting assumptions about the reach and intellectual capacity of justice-involved women. While incarcerated, she presented legislative testimony on a reentry alternative she created for people incarcerated long-term, which was approved by the Indiana State Interim Committee on the Criminal Code. She sits on the advisory boards of the Lumina Foundation and the Urban Institute and is currently under contract with The New Press to publish the history of Indiana’s carceral institutions for women, in collaboration with fellow incarcerated and formerly incarcerated scholars.