Keesha M Middlemass Editor

Keesha M. Middlemass, Ph.D., is an associate professor of public policy in the Department of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She specializes in studying race, reentry, food insecurity, and public policies using interdisciplinary frameworks to integrate knowledge from different disciplines and across multiple data sources, including participant observations, in-depth interviews, focus groups, policy analysis, and archival research. Her most recent book, Convicted & Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry, won the W.E.B. DuBois Distinguished Book Award in 2018. Her research is also published in Public Health Nutrition, International Journal of Eating Disorders, Aggressive Behavior, Criminal Justice & Behavior, The Prison Journal, and Punishment & Society. Dr. Middlemass is a member of the Racial Democracy, Crime and Justice Network, a former Andrew Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow on Race, Crime and Justice at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York City, and a former American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. Dr. Middlemass earned her Ph.D. in public policy, American politics, and public administration from The School of Public & International Affairs at the University of Georgia.

CalvinJohn Smiley, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology at Hunter College–City of New York (CUNY). He specializes in studying race, reentry, and citizenship. His work is published in numerous peer-reviewed journals such as: The Prison Journal, Race Ethnicity and Education, Punishment & Society, Deviant Behavior, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, and Contemporary Justice Review. He is currently working on a book manuscript based on his research on reentry that explores the various ways men and women navigate the reentry process with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas. His future work will investigate the role of human and nonhuman interactions, particularly in carceral settings (e.g., prison-based animal therapy programs). Dr. Smiley is a member of American Sociological Association, American Society of Criminology, and Kappa Alpha Psi Inc. He is the Vice-President of the Board of Trustees of the New Jersey Association on Corrections. Dr. Smiley earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center.