David Jonathan Knight is the principal investigator and director of the Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab (Movements Lab) at Incite at Columbia University. David is an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University and a faculty fellow with the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. A political sociologist, David studies the consequences of mass imprisonment and how Black communities mobilize in response to it.

In related work, David has studied housing, poverty, and voter participation, as well as the possibilities and constraints of reparations and other redress policies. His research, which uses data ranging from in-depth interviews to large-scale experiments, has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences among other venues. David earned his PhD from the University of Chicago.

Aiyuba Thomas is a recent master’s graduate from NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where he concentrated in Social Entrepreneurship. He is a justice-impacted researcher and activist dedicated to addressing issues that impact marginalized communities, especially those affected by mass incarceration. Aiyuba is an alumnus of Columbia Justice in Education and NYU Prison Education Program. He is the founder of “The Association,” a NYU student organization created to provide on and off campus support for those affected by the INJUSTICE system. Aiyuba co-authored the book Abolition Labor, offering insights and a national inquiry into prison labor, and "How To Be Disabled in a Pandemic," a collaborative work with NYU's Center for Disability. 

As a skilled investigator, Aiyuba has conducted nearly 150 ethnographic and oral history interviews with formerly incarcerated individuals/groups, their families, supporters, lawyers, politicians, and social change activists. These interviews have led to several publications and have been featured on various multimedia platforms. Currently, Aiyuba serves as the Project Manager for “Movements Against Mass Incarceration,” an archival oral history project that aims to span the nation.

In addition to his research work, Aiyuba is deeply involved in advocacy, education, and mentorship. He tirelessly works to bring about positive change and support those affected by incarceration.

Michelle Daniel Jones, ABD, is a sixth-year doctoral student in the American Studies New York University. Michelle’s dissertation focuses on creative liberation strategies of incarcerated people. As an organizer, collaborator, and subject matter expert she creates opportunities to speak truth to power and serves in the development and operation of taskforces and initiatives to reduce harm and end mass incarceration.  She has joined Second Chance Educational Alliance as a Senior Research Consultant, the Survivor’s Justice Project, Women Transcending Oral History Project and serves on the boards of Worth Rises and Correctional Association of New York and advisory boards of the Jamii Sisterhood, The Education Trust, A Touch of Light, Urban Institute and ITHAKA's Higher Ed in Prison Project.

She is board president of Constructing Our Future, a housing organization created by incarcerated women in Indiana. Michelle’s fellowships include Beyond the Bars, Charles Warren Center for Studies at Harvard University, Ford Foundation Bearing Witness with Art for Justice, SOZE Right of Return, Code for America and Mural Arts Rendering Justice, University of Chicago, Practitioner of the People. Michelle is the author and co-editor of Who Would Believe a Prisoner: Indiana Women’s Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920, published by the New Press. As an artist, Michelle finds ways to funnel her research into theater, dance and photography. Her co-authored play, “The Duchess of Stringtown” was produced in 2017 in Indianapolis and New York and her artist installation about weaponized stigma, “Point of Triangulation,” ran in New York 2019 and 2020, Philadelphia 2021 with a public mural. “Makes Me Wanna Holla: Art, Death and Imprisonment, explores COVID-19 in prisons, ran in Chicago 2023. 

Victor "Marka27" Quiñonez (STREET THEORY) is a renowned international street artist who is known for his diverse works that intersect contemporary art, graffiti, vinyl toys, fashion and design, and art activism. His public art street murals are a continuation of his heritage and connection to the Mexican Masters Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Siqueiros, who are referred to as "los tres grandes" (the three great ones). His work is inspired by the empowerment of marginalized communities and the fight for representation.

Marka27's artistry encompasses paintings, murals, drawings, mix-media pieces, and private commissions for major brands. His robust palette combines elements of street and pop culture with Mexican and Indigenous aesthetics, that he has coined as his signature look "Neo Indigenous." Marka27's work has cemented his place in graffiti and street art history, and he has flourished as a product designer, gallery artist, toy designer, and more. He has emerged as one of the most sought after muralists in the world and has mastered his craft since before "street art" was even a term.

Aislinn Pulley is the Executive Director at the Chicago Torture Justice Center and a long-time organizer who has worked on a variety of campaigns including the Reparations Now movement to pass the historic 2015 Reparations Ordinance for survivors of CPD torture. Born and raised in Chicago, Aislinn founded the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter as part of the Freedom Ride to Ferguson in August 2014 and was the youngest founding member of the cultural non-profit that used art for social change, Insight Arts. She is the founder and creator of urban youth magazine, Underground Philosophy as well as a founder of the young women’s performance ensemble dedicated to ending sexual assault, Visibility Now.

Romarilyn Ralston is the new Senior Director of the Justice Education Center for Claremont Colleges and the former executive director of Project Rebound at California State Fullerton. While at CSUF, she helped launch the program and expand it to other CSU campuses across the state. Romarilyn was instrumental in establishing the John Irwin Transformative Housing Initiative, the first transformative housing initiative in the country for reentry college students, and the Center for Hope and Redemption, a transformative justice space that centers community and university collaboration around issues of justice, gender, and race. After serving 23 years in prison, she earned a Bachelor’s degree with Honors in Gender & Feminist Studies from Pitzer College. She then went on to achieve a Master’s degree in Liberal Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to an advanced degree, Romarilyn has completed a number of fellowships: CORO Fellowship in Public Affairs, Women’s (Solis) Policy Institute, Napier Fellowship for Peace and Justice, Leading with Conviction Fellowship, and currently a Galaxy Gives Fellow. This education has fueled her commitment to help others discover the transformative power of post-secondary education and community accountability. In 2022, she received a full pardon from Governor Gavin Newsom. Her dedication has earned her numerous social justice awards and recognitions, such as accolades from the California Legislature, the National Council of 100 Black Women-Orange County Chapter, and Pitzer College's Distinguished Alumni award in 2021.

Barred Business’ Denise Ruben, Co-founder/ Deputy-Director is an abolitionist, criminal justice/civil rights activist and advocate, community organizer, and survivor of incarceration. While working diligently to lift up the community and dedicating her life to changing the narrative of criminal and social justice reform; she works vigilantly to improve the quality of life for formerly incarcerated, justice impacted, demarginalized, and disenfranchised communities. She has been a community organizer for Women on the Rise; a member of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls; and a fellow with the National Bail Out (NBO). She is a member of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) Organizing Table. She is a formerly incarcerated woman who actively seeks balance and stability for all humans affected by the judicial system.

Barred Business’ Bridgette Simpson, the Co-founder/Executive Director is a formerly incarcerated survivor, activist, advocate, entrepreneur, published author, motivational speaker, mentor, certified life coach, co-founder of Barred Business and the Formerly Incarcerated Small Business Rescue Fund, Minister of Organizing for M4BL, an organizer for Women Run Campaign, a canvasser for Working Families Party, and trailblazer who partners with other survivors, activists, social justice reform organizations, organizers, public figures, formerly incarcerated and incarcerated people to empower, inspire change, and promote hope. She worked as a case manager for NBO and the Center for Resilient Individuals, Families, and Communities (CRIFC); facilitates training for impacted individuals; and is a past M4BL Minister of Organizing and Relationship Building and a current M4BL field team manager. In October 2022, she addressed the National Council’s annual FreeHer Conference on “Leveraging Local Legislation as a Springboard for Federal Wins.” After spending a decade training in the professional corporate arena, Bridgette spent 10 years in the state of Georgia’s Department of Correction, receiving up-close and personal training in the penal system. Bridgette now fuses both aspects of her training to educate people on the inequalities of the criminal justice system and the pressing need for social justice reform. She also teaches perseverance, drive, change, and the willingness to overcome any obstacle. Because of Bridgette’s unique experiences, she has the ability to connect with the beating hearts of people who are or have been behind bars, their supporters, and people who are uninformed about the injustices of the criminal justice system.

Renaldo Hudson, a Social Change Fellow in the Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab, is an artist, visionary, and restorative thinking practitioner who is fighting desperately to ensure that the humanity of the incarcerated is not just sympathized with but fully protected. He strives for transformative action, and not just transformative language. He is an activist and community organizer who happens to be the Director of Education for the Illinois Prison Project. He has focused his work toward ending mass incarceration in Illinois, and now he is focused on ending the death penalty in this country and abroad. After being sentenced to death row, he woke up to his role in this fight for fair chances and trying to bring people around to accountability and responsibility from both sides of the coin. 

Renaldo is responsible for founding the groundbreaking program called the Building Block program, a transformational program that is run by incarcerated people within the Illinois Department of Correction. Renaldo's work has been celebrated  and is the focus of media outlets throughout Illinois and nationally, including as the subject of the documentaries Building Block (available on YouTube) and Stateville Calling. His work has also been featured in the documentary Bloodshed Understanding Violence and Pursuing Peace and in a Sentencing Project report on life sentences without the possibility of parole. The Global Leadership Summit  recently featured Renaldo's story and the Building Black Program to an audience of over 65,000 people.

Zach Gillespie is a driven and intellectually curious scholar who has embarked on an academic journey focused on unraveling the complexities of social justice and equity. As a Native of Harlem, New York, he brings a deep understanding of urban communities and their dynamics to his studies. In his first year of pursuing a Master of Arts degree in Africana Studies at NYU, Zach’s academic pursuits are a natural extension of his passion for advocating change and addressing systematic inequalities.

Zach’s academic foundation was laid at NYU, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies. His commitment to academic excellence is evident in his involvement with the NYU Prison Education Program Research Lab.

Taylor B. Alarcon is a Ph.D. student, Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow, and Provost Diversity Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. Broadly, he studies racial and economic inequality using quantitative and computational methods, with particular interests in housing, neighborhoods, crime, policing, technology, and algorithms. 

Prior to Columbia, Taylor was an IRT Fellow, a research associate in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University and the Information Sciences Institute at University of Southern California, and a product design leader in the tech industry. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in Applied Mathematics in 2017.

FIELDS OF INTEREST: The political economy of incarcerated labor, movement and organizing networks, incarcerated public opinion and political action.

Hannah Pullen-Blasnik is a Ph.D. candidate, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship recipient, and Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in the Sociology Department at Columbia University. Her primary research interests include political economy and the criminal legal system, algorithms and surveillance, urban space and place, and social movements. Her dissertation looks at policing and real estate development in New York City, how power gets regulated and contested in urban development, and how carceral technologies alter these dynamics. She uses a mixture of quantitative, computational, and qualitative techniques. 

In addition to being a researcher with the Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab, Hannah is also Project Director on the Criminal Legal Algorithms, Technology, and Expertise (CLATE) project at the Trust Collaboratory and a researcher with Incite's Data and Racial Inequality Project. She has also worked on the Pennsylvania Solitary Project at the Columbia Justice Lab and has volunteered with Data for Black Lives, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and local government office.

FIELDS OF INTEREST: The political economy of incarcerated labor, movement and organizing networks, incarcerated public opinion and political action.

Jasanté Howard is a PhD student in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, where he specializes in American Politics and Racial and Ethnic Politics, with an emphasis on Black politics. His research interests include policing and the carceral state, the politics and theory of Black political prisoners and radicals, Black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. His current dissertation, “The Limits of Police Reform,” is a case study of the development and implementation of “problem oriented policing” in Newport News, Virginia.

Jack LaViolette is a PhD candidate and Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in sociology at Columbia University, as well as a Doctoral Fellow at Incite. His dissertation research sits at the intersections of cultural, historical, and computational sociology, focusing on the relationship between sensory perception and middle-class leisure practices in two periods of American history. At the Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab he assists with network analysis, data visualization, and natural language processing.

FIELDS OF INTEREST:  The political economy of incarcerated labor, movement and organizing networks.

Jonathan Ben-Menachem is a Ph.D candidate in the sociology department at Columbia University, a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. He researches the politics of American criminalization using a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods. Most recently, he published a study about the causal effect of police stops on voter turnout in the American Political Science Review. His ongoing dissertation research examines the working practices of American crime journalists in local newsrooms.

Jonathan previously worked at the Fines and Fees Justice Center, where he designed and managed the organization’s Clearinghouse, a research library documenting American fines and fees practices and efforts to end related harms. He has also published several articles about the politics of crime and punishment in publications including the Washington Post, Slate, Defector, Inquest, and more.

FIELDS OF INTEREST: The political economy of incarcerated labor, movement and organizing networks, incarcerated public opinion and political action

Alia Nahra (she/her) is a JD/PhD student in sociology at Columbia University. Her work focuses on violence and power within the criminal legal system, with a focus on sexual violence and the experiences of incarcerated women. She is also interested in social movements, particularly organizing and solidarity-building inside carceral facilities. Alia has conducted research with the Columbia Justice Lab, the Brennan Center for Justice, and ArchCity Defenders, among others, and works as a sexual violence crisis response advocate at Wyckoff Height Medical Center. She is a Public Interest/Public Service and Hamilton fellow at Columbia Law School and Paul F. Lazarsfeld fellow in sociology. Alia earned her BA in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Sociology from Washington University in St. Louis and an MA in Sociology from Columbia University. 

FIELDS OF INTEREST:  Movement and organizing networks, incarcerated public opinion and political action, legal advocacy and movement lawyering, and women, gender, and Black feminism.

Jess Robinson is a JD-PhD student in sociology and Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow at Columbia University. Her research interests include punishment and social control, governance, surveillance and technology, and professionalization and expertise, with a primary focus on the criminal legal system. Methodologically, she pursues mixed-methods research, with a focus on social networks and a commitment to participatory and engaged approaches. Before joining Columbia University, she worked as a Senior Data Analyst at CORNERS, the Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research and Science.

FIELDS OF INTEREST::The political economy of incarcerated labor,  movement and organizing networks, global and transnational perspectives.

Ashtan Grace Towles is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology. Her research focuses on economic sociology, poverty reduction, and community health. Specifically, she examines how localized systems of care help people reenter communities from jails and prisons as well as divert people away from arrest and incarceration. Past research projects have centered on human rights in prisons, hate violence prevention, community responder programs, and the intersection of legislative policies and communities of color. She is a recipient of Columbia’s Provost Diversity Fellowship as well as the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellowship. 

Ashtan joined the Department of Sociology after graduating with distinction from the dual Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts program in Political Science at Yale University. After receiving her joint BA and MA in 2019, she spent time working in positions that allowed her to merge her interests, which included work as a Senior Project Analyst for the Council of State Governments Justice Center. Whenever she’s free, she enjoys singing worship music.