Deena A. Isom is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of South Carolina. She received her PhD in 2015 in Sociology with specializations in Criminology and Social Psychology from Emory University. Her research brings marginalized voices and lived experiences center to the understandings of the causes and consequences of negative and harmful behaviors and entanglement with the justice system through the advancement of criminological theory, critical perspectives, and intersectional methodologies. Her work has appeared in numerous outlets such as the Race and Justice, Feminist Criminology, Critical Sociology, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Social Science & Medicine, and Youth & Society. She is a University of South Carolina McCausland Fellow and Garnet Apple Award recipient as well as an Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Minorities and Women Section’s Becky Tatum Excellence in Scholarship Awardee and American Society of Criminology Division on People of Color and Crime’s Coramae Richey Mann Award for contributions to scholarship on race and justice. She is the author of the book, Gratuitous Angst in White America: A Theory of Whiteness and Crime, published in 2024 by Routledge. She is also the Editor of Race and Justice: An International Journal.