Dr. Monique Kelly hired as new MSU SOC Assistant Professor

March 17, 2021

MSU Sociology Chair Dr. Aaron McCright announced today that the department, along with the College of Social Science, has offered a tenure-track faculty position to current Dean's Research Associate Dr. Monique Kelly.

Dr. Kelly's research broadly focuses on racial and ethnic identities, attitudes, and inequality, as well as on immigration processes connected to those social dynamics. 

"I’m incredibly delighted to announce that Monique will be joining our tenure-system faculty as an Assistant Professor in mid-August. Hooray!," Dr. McCright wrote.

Dr. Kelly received her PhD in 2019 at the University of California Irvine. She joined MSU Sociology in 2019 as one of the College's first Dean's Research Associates.

"My dissertation, “Jamaican Ethnic Oneness: Race, Colorism, and Inequality,” analyzes racial and skin color stratification in Jamaica, the impact of an ideology of racial mixing on Jamaican’s explanation for that inequality, and racial and nation-based identification. A chapter of my dissertation is published in Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, with others currently under review. My post-dissertation research agenda will continue to investigate race, colorism, stratification, and inequality comparatively within the black Diaspora," Dr. Kelly wrote.

Her current research agenda uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate race, colorism, stratification, and inequality comparatively within the Anglo-Caribbean and the larger black diaspora.