Jovan Lewis
PhD, London School of Economics, 2014
Black Geographies, Economic Geography, Caribbean Thought, Constructions and Infrastructures of Poverty, Decoloniality, Inequality, Race, Economy, and the Market; the Caribbean (Jamaica), and African American communities (Tulsa, OK)
Research Interests:
Dr. Lewis is Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of California Berkeley. He is the Co-Chair of the Economic Disparities Research Cluster at Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society (HIFIS). His current book project provisionally titled, Reparative Circuits: Crime, Capital and Postcolonial Connection in Jamaica, examines how disadvantaged black youth in Jamaica engaged in the practice of international “lottery scamming,” mobilize a reparative logic of seizure in utilizing the development apparatuses of internet communication technology, customer service procedures, and money transfer services to secure economic and social mobility, from the thematic perspective of how race frames the experiences of those challenges and how a lack of resources is reconciled through attempts to rectify or simply cope with its absence. He founded the Berkeley Black Geographies Project in 2016 where he serves as director. In 2021, Dr. Lewis was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom to serve on the state’s Reparations Taskforce.