We are excited to announce that Professor Toussaint Losier will be the new Director of STPEC. Dr. Toussaint Losier is an Associate Professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. Dr. Losier holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago, with his research focusing on grassroots responses to the postwar emergence of mass incarceration in Chicago. At the UMass Amherst, he teaches courses on African American History, Black Politics, Criminal Justice policy, and transnational social movements. His writing has been published in Souls, Radical History Review, The Journal of Urban History, Against the Current, and Left Turn Magazine. He is co-author of Rethinking the American Prison Movement with Dan Berger and preparing a book manuscript titled, War for the City: Black Chicago and the Rise of the Carceral State. Please welcome Professor Losier!
We would also like to thank our out-going Director Hoang Phan for all of his work over the past 6 years, including all of the wonderful STPEC at 50 events last academic year. Thankfully Dr. Phan will still be involved in the program in a variety of ways. Stay tuned for updates on that in the coming year.