Leadership Team
Adam Hollowell
Adam Hollowell serves as Senior Research Associate at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and Director of the Inequality Studies Minor at Duke University. He is also the Faculty Director of the Benjamin N. Duke Memorial Scholarship Program and Director of the Global Inequality Research Initiative. An award-winning educator, he teaches ethics and inequality studies across multiple departments at Duke University, including the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Program in Education, the Department of History, and the Sanford School of Public Policy. He is the co-author, with Jamie McGhee, of You Mean It or You Don’t: James Baldwin’s Radical Challenge (Broadleaf Books, 2022).
David M. Malone
David Malone’s work focuses on educational psychology, applications of cognitive science to teaching and learning, literacy, student-centered approaches to instruction, experiential and service learning, and learning disabilities.
Gwendolyn Wright
Gwen Wright is the senior administrator and research scientist for the Cook Center. She oversees the development and implementation of programs and projects in support of the strategic vision and goals of the Center.
Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards
Dr. Keisha Bentley-Edwards is the Associate Director of Research and Director of the Health Equity Working Group for the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and an Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, at Duke University. She holds several leadership positions within Duke’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and faculty affiliations with Duke’s Global Health and Cancer Institutes.
Dr. Bentley-Edwards’ research focuses on how racism, gender, and culture influence development throughout the lifespan, especially for African Americans. Her research emphasizes cultural strengths and eliminating structural barriers to support healthy development in communities, families, and schools. Dr. Bentley-Edwards has published and lectured extensively on the use of racial socialization and racial cohesion strategies to facilitate positive outcomes in Black adolescents, as well as how teacher perceptions and school resources can influence disciplinary practices and classroom management. As head of the Cook Center’s Health Equity Working Group, Dr. Bentley-Edwards leads a mixed method study investigating the relationships between religion and spirituality and cardiovascular disease risk factors for African Americans. She is dedicated to healthy birth and pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health in general. Dr Bentley-Edwards is committed to eliminating racism and its effects on equitable outcomes in health systems, schools, and society. Her research has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, IBM, and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bentley-Edwards regularly shares her expertise on the role of structural racism and bias on health, education and social outcomes with families, policymakers, practitioners, and the media.
Kristen R. Stephens
Kristen Stephens is interested in legal and policy issues with regard to gifted education at the federal, state, and local levels. Her research has also focused on how teachers assess creative student products to inform future instruction.
William A. Darity, Jr. (“Sandy”)
William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, Economics, and Business at Duke University. Darity’s research focuses on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, schooling and the racial achievement gap. He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2011-2012) at Stanford, a fellow at the National Humanities Center (1989-90) and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors (1984). He received the Samuel Z. Westerfield Award in 2012 from the National Economic Association, the organization’s highest honor, and has published or edited 12 books and published more than 210 articles in professional journals.
Research and Administrative Staff
Elizabeth Degefe
Erica Phillips
Erica R. Phillips is the Educational Equity and Policy Specialist at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. She serves on the Educational Policy working group, focusing on K-12 students. Erica is a research associate for a federal grant studying the benefits and inequities of gifted programming. She has an M.A. in Educational Equity, Policy, and Reform from Duke University and B.A. in Elementary Education with a specialization in Spanish Language and Literature from The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Erica comes to The Cook Center with previous experience as a public school teacher. Working in both Durham Public Schools and Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools, Erica believes in developing the whole child, balancing culturally-responsive teaching methods with maintaining high academic expectations. Her educational passions align with removing barriers for all people to reach their fullest potential, through community organizing and policy changes.
Kennedy Ruff
Kennedy Ruff graduated from Guilford College in 2022 with a B.A in Psychology and a minor in Biology. During high school, Kennedy was a part of the first cohort for the Hank & Billye Suber Aaron Young Scholars Summer Research Institute and now oversees the program. In addition to coordinating the Young Scholars Summer Research Institute, Kennedy is a research associate to Dr. Keisha Bentley Edwards with her research in health equity.
Lucas Hubbard
Lucas Hubbard writes stories, articles, and press releases to help illuminate and broadcast the Cook Center’s research, in addition to helping edit reports produced by the Center. He obtained a B.S. in economics from Duke University with a minor in creative writing. Prior to joining the Cook Center, Lucas was the Clay Felker Staff Writer at Duke Magazine.
Qirui Ju
Qirui Ju is a Master of Arts in Economics graduate from Duke University. He is passionate about conducting quantitative research on policy-related questions, including inequality, labor, technology, and health. Qirui aims to promote progress in society through his research. Prior to Duke, he graduated with the highest distinction from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Qirui will serve as a research associate at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity.
Rachel Ruff
Rachel Ruff works to disseminate research findings and current events to media materials for the Cook Center past, current, and ongoing projects. She is also responsible for crafting engaging news stories and articles that highlight the events and achievements within the Cook Center. Additionally, Rachel manages and oversees content on the website, updates program information, and leads social media efforts. She actively collaborates with various Cook Center programs to advance their recruitment and enrollment objectives.
Additionally, she works with the Inequality Studies minor and the Hank and Billye Suber Aaron Young Scholars Research Institute. She graduated from Fayetteville State University with her BA in Political Science and a minor in Creative & Professional Writing.
Her research interests span across Political Science, History, Public Policy, and Literature, with a keen focus on higher education, civic engagement, and race. She is particularly interested in exploring political behavior, the dynamics of the American political system, and the impact of public opinion on legislative processes. Additionally, she is interested in how these concepts shape an understanding of the current state of Black American Politics.
Shahrazad Shareef
Shahrazad Shareef is a critical theorist and a historian who investigates the global expansion of capitalism in the modern era. She earned a BA in Economics from Duke University in 2006, as well as a Ph.D. in comparative literature and an Interdisciplinary Certificate in European Studies in 2021. Her dissertation was entitled: “From Crisis to Restoration: Technical Intellectuals and the Politics of Italy’s Post-war Development”. Her primary research interests include: historical capitalism and cycles of accumulation; theories of surplus value; economic development; Marxist theoretical approaches to historical analysis; the rise of Italian fascism; and philosophy and the development of worker’s consciousness. She is currently working on a book that studies the transformation of the world market through successive cycles of systemic accumulation (British and US-led). In her role at the Cook Center, Shahrazad is building the intellectual identity of the minor in inequality studies and expanding enrollment. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, she looks forward to a day when everyone is free.
Tori Cook
Tori Cook is an Associate in Research with the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity. She received her B.A. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and her Master’s in Social Work (MSW) from the University of Kentucky. Tori completed her practicum placements with the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) and the North Carolina Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NC-NASW). Prior to joining the Cook Center, she was a Research Assistant with the University of Kentucky and a Reentry Case Manager with LINC, Inc., working with individuals returning from incarceration. Her passion lies in the relationship between social research and advocacy, specifically exploring how gendered racism across systems and its policies contributes to racial disparities and inequities in the criminal justice legal system. She plans to pursue her PhD in Sociology, specializing in Crime and Social Control.
Part-Time Staff
JoAnn O’Neal
JoAnn O’Neal works part-time with administrative initiatives at the Cook Center.
Postdoctoral Associates
Aten Zaandam
Aten is a management scholar whose research examines how adverse life experiences and perceptions of morality influence the strategic decision-making of top executives. Before joining Duke, he served as a research fellow for the Babson College Center for Entrepreneurship, where he examined how Black healthcare entrepreneurs overcome systematic marginalization. He also worked as a researcher at the Defense Equal Opportunity Institute where he sought to determine how conscious and unconscious racial biases decreased military preparedness.
Ayinwi Muma
Ayinwi Muma is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University. Her research examines the impact of regulatory policy changes on entrepreneurial activity across various socially-constructed identity groups, e.g., race and gender.
Her dissertation explores three central questions: First, in “normal times” how do young, relatively unknown entrepreneurial firms introduce novel technologies into established organizational contexts? Second, what happened to investments in early-stage entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic? Third, how did the June 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade affect subsequent entrepreneurial activity across states in the U.S., and what are the implications for entrepreneurship and labor force participation among women?
Ayinwi holds a B.A. in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University, an M.B.A. in Strategic Management from Georgia Institute of Technology, and (will soon hold!) a Ph.D. in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University in Summer 2023.
Pak Hung Lam
Pak Hung is an applied economist whose research interests center on development, education, environmental, and health economics. He is particularly interested in critical issues related to population health, economic development in Africa and Asia, and global environmental health and justice issues. Prior to joining Duke, he earned his Ph.D. in Social Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and served as a Visiting Ph.D. student at the Yale School of Public Health. His website can be found here.
Quran Karriem
Quran is an experimental musician, media artist and theorist working primarily with electronic and algorithmic media. His research is concerned with human improvisation and automated decision, particularly insofar as they reproduce sovereign power and racial hierarchy through semi-autonomous knowledge systems. His work examines the power relations and ideologies that inhere in the design of digital systems, processes and interfaces, and is motivated by a concern with the operative and recursive nature of computational, racialized capital in postmodern sociotechnical assemblages.
A multiple award-winning software designer and former product executive, Quran has led development teams for a number of media and technology companies and applies a decade of direct experience with systems design, data management and organizational structure in the context of ‘start-up culture’ to social critique. His product initiatives have been recognized by such global research and trade bodies as Gartner Research, the Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association (GSMA), the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) and Frost & Sullivan.
Sungmee Kim
Sungmee is an applied microeconomist specializing in education and health policy for K-12 students and young adults in the United States and South Korea. With a focus on closing the gap between diverse groups, Sungmee conducts quantitative research to integrate educational and health outcomes to inform policy decisions.
Her recent work provides a comprehensive analysis of gender differences in remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting trends and potential mechanisms behind disparities in academic performance throughout the period of school closures and the subsequent return to in-person learning. Her ongoing research includes examining the impact of the ACA Medicaid expansion on closing the “coverage gap” for low-income young adults and investigating how variations in primary learning modalities during the pandemic influenced trends in child maltreatment allegations and foster care placements.
Sungmee holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Georgia State University, where she worked as a graduate research assistant at the Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education (MAPLE) of the Georgia Policy Labs.
Will Damron
Will is a postdoctoral associate at the Cook Center. His research focuses on the economic history of the American South. Prior to joining the Cook Center, he completed a PhD in economics at Yale University and a BS at Davidson College.
Xiongfei Li
Xiongfei Li recently received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California. His research focuses on the intersection between inequality and the labor market, especially in the context of China. He has conducted research on topics including gender inequalities, educational return and inequality, and environmental policy biases. Prior to USC, he received a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a bachelor’s degree from Nankai University. He will join the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University as a postdoctoral associate in August 2023.
Doctoral Scholars
Arko Dasgupta
Arko Dasgupta is a PhD candidate in history at Carnegie Mellon University and an Associate in Research in the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. His research interests include empire, race, Modern India, early Indian immigration in the United States, and the Civil Rights Movement. He is currently working on his dissertation titled The Colour of Anticolonialism: Locating Antiracism in the Indian Freedom Struggle, 1893-1964. He is a Prafulla C Mukerji Fellow and a Kedia-Tayur Fellow in South Asian American History at Carnegie Mellon University. He has an MPhil in International Studies from Jamia Millia Islamia, an MA in Conflict Analysis & Peace Building from Jamia Millia Islamia, and a BA in Economics, Political Science, Sociology from St Joseph’s College, Bangalore. Access Arko’s website here: arkodasgupta.com
Faculty Affiliates
Nancy MacLean
Nancy MacLean is an award-winning scholar of the twentieth-century U.S., whose most recent book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction and a New York Times bestseller, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Current Interest, the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award, and the Lillian Smith Book Award for writing about the South. MacLean is the author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006) called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, named a New York Times “noteworthy” book of 1994. Her articles and review essays have appeared in American Quarterly, The Boston Review, Feminist Studies, Gender & History, In These Times, International Labor and Working-Class History, Labor, Labor History, Journal of American History, Journal of Women’s History, Law and History Review, The Nation, The New Republic, the Progressive and many edited collections. Often on the radio, she has also been a frequent guest on such cable shows as Democracy Now! Real Time with Bill Maher, and the ReidOut with Joy Reid. Professor MacLean’s scholarship has received more than a dozen prizes and awards and been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, PolicyLink, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowships Foundation. In 2010, she was elected a fellow of the Society of American Historians, which recognizes literary distinction in the writing of history and biography.
Omari H. Swinton
Omari H. Swinton is a professor in the Economics department at Howard University where he teaches introductory, intermediate, and urban economics. He is currently the Director of Graduate Studies and Chair. Additionally, he serves as Division Chair for the Social Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research interests include labor economics and education. He has papers examining the teenage labor market, the benefits from attending HBCU’s, and the returns to a college education. He coauthored a report for NAFEO entitled “The State of Blacks in Higher Education.” And has a published a book on HBCUs titled “Vital and Valuable: The Relevance of HBCUs to American Life and Education.” He currently is working on projects that examine the returns to effort for students, the obstacles to faculty diversity in higher education, and benefits of attending an HBCU.
He is the director of the AEA Summer Training Program and Scholarship Program which has increased diversity in the field of economics by preparing talented undergraduates for doctoral programs in economics and related disciplines. He is Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Phi Beta Sigma Federal Credit Union. Dr. Swinton owns a Right at Home Franchise in Baltimore, Maryland that was just recognized for its performance as a President’s Circle Member. He earned his B.S. from Florida A & M University in 2001, and his doctoral degree from Duke University in 2007. He resides in Upper Marlboro, MD with his wife, Phyllis, and four children, Omari Jr., Nyla, Jamir, and Nasir.
Omer Ali
Omer Ali is an assistant professor of economics working on topics in economic history, political economy, and urban economics, with a focus on racial inequality. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to joining the department, he was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Duke University.
Paul A. Robbins
Paul Robbins is a developmental scientist who investigates the psychosocial processes by which context, culture, and identity mitigate or exacerbate inequitable health and educational outcomes at various life stages. Specifically, his work examines the developmental contexts and consequences of engagement in sports, families, and religious institutions to identify mechanisms that ensure optimal wellbeing within these spaces.
Prentiss Dantzler
Prentiss Dantzler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Founding Director of the Housing Justice Lab within the School of Cities at the University of Toronto (UofT). He also holds affiliations with the Infrastructure Institute, the Centre for Global Social Policy, and the Graduate Department of Geography and Planning at UofT. As an interdisciplinary community-engaged scholar, Dantzler’s work focuses on how and why neighborhoods change and how community members, institutions, and policy actors create and react to those changes. Dantzler received his Ph.D. in Public Affairs along with a M.S. in Community Development from Rutgers University-Camden. He also holds an M.P.A. (Urban and Regional Planning & GIS) from West Chester University and a B.S. (Energy, Business and Finance) from Penn State University.
He is a member of the “Policing, Enforcement and Justice” working group at the Cook Center.
Raffi E. García
Raffi E. García is an Associate Professor of Finance and Accounting in the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research interests are in the fields of financial economics, corporate finance and empirical industrial organization. García’s research focuses on measuring and understanding the effects of regulations and unexpected events or shocks on firm behavior, strategy and performance. He has presented his work at major academic conferences, including the American Economic Association (AEA), the Royal Economic Society (RES), the International Industrial Organization (IIOC), and the Econometric Society (ES)-Latin America and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) annual conferences. He is the recipient of multiple research and travel grants including the Rosenberg Institute of Global Finance Research Grant and the AEA Economics Mentoring Program Travel Grant (sponsored by the National Science Foundation). While completing his PhD, he was awarded dissertation fellowships by the American Economic Association and by the American Society of Hispanic Economists (ASHE).
García received his PhD in International Economics and Finance from Brandeis University in 2018.
Ronda Taylor Bullock
With a critical race theory lens, Dr. Ronda Taylor Bullock studies whiteness and white children’s racial identity construction. She uses education as a means to provide racial equity trainings and programs for youth, parents, and educators. Two of her publications include Racial Identity Construction: A Critical Analysis of White Children Recognizing, Reifying, and Resisting Whiteness, and Raising Conscious Kids: A Community-based Approach.
Sandra Barnes
Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Barnes is an ordained minister, C.V. Starr Professor, and Chair of the Dept. of Sociology at Brown University. Her areas of research and teaching include sociology of religion; inequality, as it pertains to race, class, and gender; urban sociology; statistics; and African American studies. Dr. Barnes’ most recent book, From Jesus to J-Setting: Religious and Sexual Fluidity among Black Young People (University of Georgia Press 2023) chronicles the religious experiences of young Black people with diverse sexual identities. The book examines how the intersection of racial, sexual, gender, and religious identities influence self-expression and lifestyle modalities. Narratives illumine a continuum of decisions – from more traditional (i.e., Black Church participation) to non-traditional (i.e., dancing known as J-Setting and spirituality) – and the corresponding beliefs, values, and experiences that emerge under the ever-present specter of racism, homophobia, heterosexism, and for many, ageism. This mixed-methodological study considers the experiences of 236 young persons who describe efforts to negotiate racially- and sexually-charged spaces in search of security, stability, and safety.
Research Assistants and Fellows
Catherine Kiplagat
Catherine is a freshman majoring in Chemistry hoping to pursue biotech research and is a student-athlete on the track and field team. Catherine participated in the Young Scholars program prior to Duke and researched the effects of black representation on predominately black cities and how mental health impacts recidivism rates in black inmates.
Olanrewaju “Lanre” Adisa
Olanrewaju “Lanre” Adisa is a graduate student in the Duke University School of Medicine and a member of the Health Equity Working Group with the Cook Center.