Provost Diversity Fellow: LeShae Henderson

LeShae Henderson, PhD candidate

Department and School
Sociology, Arts & Sciences

Bio
LeShae Henderson’s research lies at the intersections of race and race-making, incarceration, prisons, inequality, and indigeneity. Her dissertation project examines the presence of Hawaiian culture in Hawai’i’s prison system to understand how various prison actors—from incarcerated people to wardens—define and draw on Hawaiian culture for their own, often contradicting, purposes. Through this work, LeShae aims to explore how Native Hawaiian cultural practices and identities persist in an institution that is historically meant to “strip away the self.” LeShae is a current National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and an inaugural Reducing Inequality Network fellow. Prior to her doctoral studies, LeShae worked at the Vera Institute of Justice where she co-authored its first publication explicitly centered on race in the criminal legal system. In her spare time, she also helped produce the Decarcerated podcast. LeShae earned her A.B. in Sociology from Harvard College in 2016.

Advisor
Bruce Western, Chair and Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice, Sociology

Favorite hangout on or off campus
Brooklyn Bridge Park

To learn more about LeShae Henderson , please follow her on X, connect via LinkedIn or email her directly.