ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sancha Doxilly Medwinter, PhD, is a sociologist who studies social inequality. She conducts ethnographies of urban and organizational environments. Her research focuses on race, class, and citizen inequality, trauma, and survival among marginalized communities. Dr. Medwinter has held the position of assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for the past five years. She was born in the city of Castries and was raised in Grande-Riviere, on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. There, she began her education at Grand-Riviere Combined School. She then secured her placement at the island’s top high school for girls, St. Joseph’s Convent. She later attended Brooklyn College, at the City University of New York, where she graduated summa cum laude, earning a bachelor of arts degree in political science, with a minor in law and society in June 2009. In 2012, she earned a master of arts degree in sociology from Duke University. She graduated from Duke in May 2015 with a PhD in sociology.

Dr. Medwinter is a public sociologist whose work aims to inform and critique policy, practice, and norms that shape the well-being of economically deprived, racially minoritized, and marginalized communities in the United States and the Caribbean. Her research and teaching areas span race and racism; social inequality; international disasters and crises; poverty, mobility, and social welfare; immigration and citizenship; and Caribbean studies. Dr. Medwinter’s most recent publications are “Caribbean Womanism: Decolonial Theorizing of Caribbean Women’s Oppression, Survival, and Resistance” (with Tannuja D. Rozario, 2020) and “Reproducing Poverty and Inequality in Disaster: Race, Class, Social Capital, NGOs, and Urban Space in New York City after Superstorm Sandy” (2021).