Keisha-Khan Y. Perry papers (Ms.2021.002)

Biographical/Historical Note

Keisha-Khan Y. Perry was born in Kingston, Jamaica and migrated to the United States at the age of 10. She became a star field hockey player in middle and high school, and developed a passion for learning languages. She received a Bachelor of Science in Spanish and a Bachelor of Arts in Women's Studies from Georgetown University and a Masters and Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin.

Since the start of her career, she has been a professor of Africana Studies at Brown University where she taught classes focused on and researched questions of race, gender and politics in the Americas, urban geography and questions of citizenship, intellectual history and disciplinary formation, and the interrelationship between scholarship, pedagogy and political engagement.

Perry's first book, Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), is an ethnographic study of black women's activism in Brazilian cities, specifically an examination of black women's participation and leadership in neighborhood associations, and the re-interpretations of racial and gender identities in urban spaces. The book is the result of more than a decade of research collaborations with local activists in the Gamboa de Baixo (also called Gamboa) neighborhood of the city of Salvador that is at the heart of the work.

Her research has been supported by numerous awards over the years such as the National Science Foundation and Fulbright fellowships, Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award, Pembroke Center Seed Grant for Collaborative Research, Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice Faculty Collaborative Research Award, Cogut Institute for the Humanities Faculty Grant, and Watson Center for Public and International Affairs Collaboration Grant. Most recently, Perry received the Brown University Swearer Center Inaugural Faculty Award for Engaged Research in 2019.

Perry's courses have focused on diaspora, social movements, research methods, black feminist thought, urban politics, and gendered racial thought in Brazil. She considers teaching her primary vocation, and is committed to mentoring students to succeed in their respective fields and in supporting them in planning for advanced education and professional lives beyond college and graduate school. At Brown, she received the CareerLAB Comfort and Urry Prize for Leadership, Career Advising, and Motivation (2017) and the Graduate School Faculty Award for Advising and Mentoring (2018) in recognition of this advising work with both undergraduate and graduate students.

In 2021, Perry resigned from Brown University, accepting a new position as the Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

In addition to building her life as a scholar, activist, and teacher, Perry is also the mother to a young boy who is a fierce hockey and chess player.

*This biography was slightly edited from the "About" page on Perry's personal website: https://www.keishakhanperry.com/about.