Alethia Jones
Alethia Jones
Research Associate, Center for Policy Research, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy,t University at Albany, SUNY
MLK Visiting Scholar 2004-2005
Hosted by the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP)
Bio
Alethia Jones is a Research Associate in the Center for Policy Research, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at University at Albany, SUNY. She was a postdoc at the time of her MIT appointment. Research interests: political dynamics of immigrant inclusion/exclusion in US economic and social institutions; urban politics; US immigration, race and ethnic politics; and social networks and public policy.
Dr. Jones earned a BA in Urban Studies/Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University and a PhD in Political Science (2005) from Yale University. Her dissertation, “Bootstraps and Beltways: The State’s Role in Immigrant Self-Help,” goes beyond the myth of the “bootstrapping” immigrant to investigate the overlooked interaction between informal immigrant banking networks, public policy advocates, and government regulators as they re-make the financial system to create inclusive community banking institutions. Her research compares the experiences of European immigrants in the early twentieth century with those of contemporary immigrants from the Global South. I employ interviews and archival research as well as census, public opinion and other statistical data.
Dr. Jones first joined the faculty at SUNY Albany in 2005 as an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy and the Department of Political Science. Her other affiliated departments are Women’s Studies; Public Policy; and the Center for Women in Government and Civil Society.
She has also taught at the International Honors Program/World Learning as travelling faculty to "Cities in the 21st Century" in Brazil, South Africa, and Vietnam. She has been a fellow at Mount Holyoke College and at the University of Virginia.
As an MLK Scholar at MIT, Dr. Jones was hosted by the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and affiliated with the Community Innovators Laboratory (CoLab). During the spring semester she taught Course 11.947: Race, Immigration, and Planning.
Publications
Barbara Smith: Interviews and Conversations. Eds. Virginia Eubanks and Barbara Smith. State University of New York Press: 2013. Reflections with Black feminist Barbara Smith on her forty years of activism and influence on feminist theory, gay and lesbian liberation and other radical social movements, the independent publishing field, and, most recently, on public policy as an elected official.
“Identity Politics: Part of a Reinvigorated Class Politics.” New Labor Forum. Spring 2010.
“Inclusive Religious Values in the Immigration Debate: Locating and Assessing its Past Role and Future Impact.” Carnegie Corporation. Strangers and Neighbors Project.
“Immigration and Institutional Change: The Urban Origins of U.S.Postal Savings Banks.” In The City and American Political Development. Ed. Richardson Dillworth. New York: Routledge.
“Bootstraps and Beltways: The State’s Role in Immigrant Self-Help.” Yale University. 2005. (Dissertation)
“Social Facts versus Social Realities in the New Millennium.” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History. 40:4 (174-178).
“Women of Color in the Eighties: A Portrait Based on Census Data.” Tamara Jones and Alethia Jones. In Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader. Eds. Cathy Cohen, Kathy Jones and Joan Tronto. New York: NYU Press.
“Elm Haven: Historical Overview.” In Case Study Materials: Community Renaissance Fellows Program. A concise history of one of the first public housing projects in the nation, constructed in New Haven,CT in the 1930s, steps away from Yale University.