Vanessa Agard-Jones is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, where she also serves on the Executive Council of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality and is affiliated with the Institute for Research in African American Studies.

She earned my Ph.D. from the joint program in Anthropology and French Studies at New York University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia's Society of Fellows in the Humanities. From 2014-2016 she was on the faculty at Yale University.

She is the former managing editor of two journals: Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism and Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society.

Outside of academe she is the former coordinator of Oakland's Prison Activist Resource Center and the former Board Chair of New York City's Audre Lorde Project. She also taught for three years in Atlanta Public Schools, at Collier Heights/Usher Elementary and KIPP WAYS Academy.