Kevin J. A. Thomas is professor of African and African Diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his PhD and MA in demography at the University of Pennsylvania and his BA (Honors) from the University of Sierra Leone. He was a postdoctoral fellow at both the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Harvard Global Health Initiative. He was also a faculty member at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on international migration, global health, race-ethnicity, and African development.
Dr. Thomas has received the David E. Bell Fellowship from Harvard University, the Raymond Lombra Award for Distinction in the Social Sciences from the Pennsylvania State University, and the Outstanding Book Award of the American Sociological Association’s Peace, War, and Social Conflict section. He is the author of three books: Diverse Pathways: Race and the Socioeconomic Incorporation of Black, White, and Arab-Origin Africans in the United States; Contract Workers, Risk, and the War in Iraq: Sierra Leonean Labor Migrants at U.S. Military Bases; and Global Epidemics, Local Implications: African Immigrants and the Ebola Crisis in Dallas.
His project, “Life after Global Epidemics: Resilience, Recovery, and the Well-Being of Ebola Survivors in West Africa,” investigates how Ebola survivors and their communities in West Africa recovered from the 2014 Ebola epidemic.
