2023-2024 Minority Fellowship Program Fellows

Clark Brinson

Graduate Institution: Emory University

Sociologists for Women in Society MFP

Clark Brinson is a PhD candidate in sociology at Emory University where she also earned her MA. She earned her BA in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research focuses on inequality, social psychology, and the needs and experiences of queer communities and communities of color. Brinson’s dissertation, Planning Our Futures: A Qualitative Study of Family Formation Goals among Black Queer Women, examines family formation desires among Black queer-identified women living in Atlanta. Using intersectionality theory as a guiding framework, the study explores how Black queer women navigate both disadvantage and privilege during the family planning process through differences in sexual orientation, class position, and gender expression. This project applies mixed methods, using interview data with 54 Black queer women and survey data from the National LGBTQ+ Women’s Community Survey, to examine challenges in family planning among Black queer southern women. Brinson’s work aims to advance science and support organizations advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive justice, and racial justice. She has received the James Weldon Johnson Institute Dissertation Completion Grant and has been involved with the Coalition of Graduate Sociologists and the Black Graduate Student Association at Emory University. Brinson also recently completed her tenure as a Research Fellow for Justice Work, an organization that focuses on advancing equity and justice through community interventions, research, and political advocacy. In her free time, she enjoys trying new vegan recipes, hiking, and going to the beach.

Faith Deckard

Graduate Institution: University of Texas at Austin

Sociologists for Women in Society MFP

Faith Deckard is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her BA in Biology at Trinity University and her MA in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin where she was a McNair Scholar. Her areas of interests include crime, law, and deviance, population health, support networks, and debt and poverty. Her dissertation Bonded: How Commercial Bail Entangles Families through Money and Risk examines how “kin and friends” inadvertently become involved in carceral surveillance and the punishment systems through the processes of bail and bail bonds. Deckard was a Population Research Fellow (NICHD Recipient) at the University of Texas at Austin and currently serves as a graduate research assistant in the Life HD Lab where she has been able to combine her interests in biology and sociology to look at how racial inequality impacts health disparities. She also received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Deckard continues to help support minority scholars by organizing workshops on promoting self-care and applying for external funding. When she has free time, she loves to on new adventures with friends. This has led to her picking up bouldering, short hikes, and attending comedy and improv shows.

Quintin Gorman Jr.

Graduate Institution: Rice University

Association of Black Sociologists MFP

Quintin Gorman Jr. is a PhD candidate in sociology at Rice University. He received his BA at McMurry University in sociology and political science. Gorman completed his MA at Rice University in sociology, where he completed his master’s thesis titled How Black Adults’ Belief in Systemic Racism Associates with the Perception Barack Obama’s Election Proved Blacks Enjoy Racial Equality. His areas of interest include racial attitudes, racial identity, and second-class citizenship. His dissertation, The Enduring Souls of Black Folks: The Meaning, Prevalence, and Significance of Double Consciousness among Black Adults, poses the question “What is the contemporary meaning, prevalence, and significance of Du Boisian double consciousness among Black adults? His dissertation uses multi-item scales he developed to measure double consciousness and to evaluate Du Boisian theory. Gorman’s experience in the U.S. Air Force for 18 years sparked his interest in double consciousness. He currently works as a graduate research assistant for the Race and Racial Experiences (RARE) workgroup at Rice University, where faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students collaborate to investigate how racism impacts lifestyles and life chances in the United States and the Global South. He enjoys spending time with family, watching sports, and collecting vinyl records in his spare time.

Jonathan Ibarra

Graduate Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara

Jonathan Ibarra is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Ibarra earned his BA and MA at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he served on the Hispanic Serving Institute committee as an undergraduate representative, and as a McNair’s Scholar Program Graduate Research Mentor. His areas of interest include inequality, Latinx sociology, culture, education, and ethnography. His dissertation Reactionary Disciplining-Support: Punitive Processes, Support Networks, and the Experiences of Mexican American and Latinx High School Students explores the educational experiences of working-class Mexican American and Latinx students and how they navigate school discipline and non-disciplinary support networks. Using ethnographic interviews, he found that schools often relied upon “reactionary disciplining-support” by using discipline to initiate support, often perceived as punitive discipline by students. Ibarra’s work illuminates the understudied phenomena of Mexican American and Latinx youth’s disproportionate experiences with school discipline and how these experiences foster educational skepticism. He has served as a CARE-UC Innovation Fellow with the domestic programs team where he explored the intersection of education and inequality. In his spare time, Ibarra enjoys hiking, biking, walking on the beach, and playing basketball. He also loves experimenting in the kitchen, making good meals for his friends and family.

Demetrius Miles Murphy

Graduate Institution: University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Alpha Kappa Delta MFP

Demetrius Miles Murphy is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He earned his BBA in Management Consulting and Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame and his MA in Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University where he learned Portuguese to be able to conduct in-depth interviews and observations for his MA thesis Doing Business in the Black: Afro-Brazilian Entrepreneurship as Resistance to Anti-Blackness in São Paulo Brazil. Murphy’s interests include race and ethnicity, urban and economic sociology, culture, and qualitative methodologies. His dissertation Remaking Black LA: Black Flourishing in the Anti-Black Metropolis examines how Black people across the class spectrum create and experience flourishing in Los Angeles County. His dissertation unites three broad sociological topics: Black placemaking, flourishing, and the Black class structure. In doing so, he adds “positive sociology of Blackness” to the literature, moving the central focus of research on Black life based around crime, death, and poverty to that of living well. Murphy received the Devon T. Wade Student Paper Award from the Association of Black Sociologists, the James E. Blackwell Graduate Student Paper Award from the ASA Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, and an honorable mention for the Cristina Maria Riegos Distinguished Student Paper Award from the ASA Latina/o Sociology Section for his article “Aquilombamento, Entrepreneurial Black Placemaking in an Anti-Black City.” His second manuscript “Quem pode ser a dona?: Afro-Brazilian Women Entrepreneurs and Gendered Racism” received the SSSP Kauffman Foundation Best Student Paper Award in Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation. In his free time, Murphy enjoys traveling, reading, and watching television.

DeAnna Smith

Graduate Institution: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Midwest Sociological Society MFP

DeAnna Smith is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She earned her BA in sociology at Northwestern University, and her MA in sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Smith’s research interests include surveillance, punishment, race, class, gender, and the family. Her dissertation, Three Papers on Families Navigating Surveillance and Punishment after Prison, investigates how formerly incarcerated women and their families traverse the tumultuous and ever-evolving landscape of surveillance and punishment after incarceration. Her dissertation draws on interviews with formerly incarcerated women, their family members, and their parole agents, as well as 11 months of participant observation with women as they navigate reentry services in Chicago. Through articles on technological advancements in state surveillance, personal responsibility, and housing insecurity, Smith shows how formerly incarcerated women, and their families, resist surveillance and try to rebuild their families after incarceration, while parole agents and re-entry actors generate new logics that justify widening and deepening the net of surveillance and punishment. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Michigan’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG), and University of Michigan’s Center for the Education of Women (CEW+). Thus far, her work has been published in Contexts and the Annual Review of Sociology. Outside of research and teaching, Smith enjoys traveling, practicing yoga, creating pottery, and reading mystery and thriller novels.