Description:

Dr. Debra Thompson is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies, specializing in Black Politics and Comparative Race and Ethnic Politics. As a political scientist with strong interdisciplinary orientations, Thompson’s teaching and research interests focus on the relationships among race, the state, and public policy. Using transnational, diasporic, and comparative analysis, Thompson’s research examines the state’s role in the construction of racial categories, exploring the ways in which the legal demarcation of the boundaries of blackness are imbued with multiple manifestations of political power. Dr. Thompson held a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University in 2010-2011 and in 2011 received the prestigious Academic Gold Medal from the Governor General of Canada. She teaches courses on Black Political and Social Life, The Racial State, and Race and the American Constitution.