Sha'Kurra Evans
Graduate Research Assistant
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Email:
About
Sha' Kurra (shuh-KOOR-ruh) Evans is in her fourth year in the Sociology PhD program at UIC with a graduate concentration in Black Studies. She received her M.A. in Sociology in the Spring of 2020 from UIC and completed her B.A. in Sociology with a minor in African and African American Studies at Iowa State University in 2018. Upon completing my PhD, her goal is to obtain a tenure-track position in Black Studies, or a closely related field, at a research-focused university—ultimately working towards an administrative role in the department. She would also like to engage her research with general, public audiences, as a means to make this type of knowledge more widely accessible to individuals that may lack the resources and opportunities for accessing formal higher education.
Broadly, her research interests include using abolitionist and Black feminist perspectives to explore the ways race, class, gender, and sexuality interlock in shaping the different experiences of African Americans. She has particular research interests in urban education and housing; racialized, gendered, and state violence; as well as carcerality and abolition. She is currently working on a project in which she is analyzing interviews with Black mothers on the West Side of Chicago in an attempt to shift scholarship about neoliberal public school choice reforms — specifically in the Chicago Public School District — to center Black women and families. She believes that centering Black women in these conversations will help expose some of the shortcomings of neoliberal public school choice reforms that get obscured when white middle-class ideals and experiences are used as the standard of analysis.