Research Bio

Nikki Jones is a professor in the department of African American Studies at Berkeley. She served as the H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Department Chair of African American Studies from 2021-2024 and has been on faculty in the UC-system for over twenty years.  Her work examines the experiences of Black women, men, and youth with the criminal legal system, policing, and violence. She is the author of two books: Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence (2010) and The Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption (2018), which received the Michael J. Hindelang Outstanding Book Award from the American Society of Criminology in 2020. She is currently at work on her third book, Brutal & Routine, which examines the enduring legacy of racist policing in the U.S. and the promise of abolitionist dreams. More recent work includes the analysis of interviews with police officers and the analysis of video recordings of lethal and routine encounters between Black people and the police. Records of these encounters are housed in her research lab. Professor Jones has shared her expertise with numerous print, radio, and television news media outlets, including NPR, KCBS Radio, Axios.com, History.com, BBC World Newshour, Minnesota Public Radio, Time Magazine, KQED’s Forum, Ireland Today, Australia Broadcasting Corporation (The Drum), SF Weekly, The Dallas Morning News, and CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” among others. Professor Jones is also a faculty affiliate with the Center for Race and Gender; the Department of Women and Gender Studies; and the Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC-Berkeley.

Research Expertise and Interest

African American communities, policing, racial/gender disparities and the criminal justice system, violence and violence interventions