Sally A. Nuamah, Ph.D.

Award-Winning Scholar. Author. Advocate. Founder. Filmmaker.

I am an associate professor (w/tenure) at Northwestern University. Previously, I held appointments at Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and Princeton University.

My research sits at the intersections of race, gender, education, and political behavior. My latest book, Closed for Democracy, is on how public-school closings undermine the citizenship of Black Americans (Cambridge University Press 22/23). It is the recipient of three 2023 American Political Science Association (APSA) Best Book awards. In March 2024, the book was selected for the W.E.B Dubois Distinguished book award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS), and named a finalist for the PROSE award in politics. Research from this book has been published in the American Political Science Review and Perspectives on Politics.

My newest research is culminating in a third book tentatively titled, “Mules: The Punishment and Political Labor of Black Women.” An article based on this work was named the “Best Paper on Intersectionality” from the American Political Science Association (APSA) and awarded the Rodney Higgins “Best Faculty Paper” from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS).

My first book, How Girls Achieve (2019) highlights how the biased educational experiences of Black girls in the U.S. and Africa limit their ability to achieve democratic equity. It received the 2020 Prose Award in Education Practice and Social Science by the American Publishers Association: the 2020 Critics’ Choice Book Awardfrom the American Educational Studies Association, and the 2021 Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Awardfrom the Comparative International Education Society.

In addition to research, I advocate for Black girls. I am the founder of Herstory: the TWII Foundation Girls Scholarship. I have an award-winning film titled, HerStory, based on this work. I am the recipient of over thirty awards including ForbesMagazine “30 Under 30” in education, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, aka “the Brainy Award,” and the Marilyn Gittell Award for Scholarship and Activism.

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