Biography

Dr. Nicole Dezrea Jenkins is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University and a current Harvard University Faculty Fellow. She received her Doctoral degree from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in the Department of Sociology and holds an M.A. in Sociology from the same institution. In 2013, she earned an A.A. in Criminal Justice after serving six years of active duty in the United States Air Force as Military Police. Dr. Jenkins teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Ethnography, Theory, Poverty, and the Black Community. As a qualitative researcher and urban ethnographer, she incorporates intersectional and critical feminist frameworks into her research, centering the experiences of women in the African Diaspora. Her current book project, under contract with Princeton University Press and tentatively titled CROWNed: Black Women’s Entanglement with U.S. Institutions, is based on two years of ethnographic research in a Las Vegas African hair braiding salon. This research delves into the complexities of Black women's identity-making and examines how perceptions of nationhood and Black womanhood can hinder this process. Her research on natural hair extends the conversation of natural hair discrimination globally by capturing the experiences of Black women around the world who wear their natural hair. This work leverages AI tooling and was featured in the May 2024 issue of Nature magazine. Her works can be found in IGI Global, Issues of Race and Society, Taylor and Francis, Rutgers University Press, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.