Rashawn Ray

Rashawn Ray is Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Currently, he is a David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. Ray is also one of the co-editors of Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public. Formerly, Ray was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and he currently serves on the National Advisory Committee for the RWJF Health Policy Research Scholars Program.

Ray’s research addresses the mechanisms that manufacture and maintain racial and social inequality with a particular focus on police-civilian relations and men’s treatment of women. His work also speaks to ways that inequality may be attenuated through racial uplift activism and social policy. Ray has published more than 50 books, articles, and book chapters, and 20 op-eds. His book "How Families Matter: Simply Complicated Intersections of Race, Gender, and Work" (with Pamela Braboy Jackson) was published in 2018 and he edited "Race and Ethnic Relations in the 21st Century: History, Theory, Institutions, and Policy," which has been adopted nearly 40 times in college courses.