Alyasah “Ali” Sewell

Dr. Alyasah “Ali” Sewell (they/them) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University, Affiliated Faculty with the Department of African American Studies, and Executive Director of the Critical Racism Data Lab. They are a leading expert in quantifying systemic racism, police brutality, and intersectionality. A widely-published medical sociologist, social psychologist, and social science research methodologist, they assess the political economies of racism, medicine, and health disparities using interdisciplinary, policy-relevant, and actionable research models.

Sewell is the Senior Justice Work Fellow at the National Center for Civic Innovation, where they field the National LGBTQ+ Women’s Community Survey – the first-ever cross-sectional repeated panel survey of LGBTQ+ women based on an intersectional sampling design. In 2016, Planned Parenthood designated them “The Future: Innovator and Visionary Who Will Transform Black Communities.” They were named the Georgia Sociologist of the Year in 2021. They are a renowned public sociologist, having given over 70 honored and invited lectures on data equity issues in the science of racial statistics and founding The Race and Policing Project, an early incubator of peer-reviewed research on ethnoracial inequalities in police brutality and injury prevention. Their research has garnered support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Baden-Württemberg Foundation.

Dr. Sewell was a Vice Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. They received their Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from Indiana University, Bloomington with a Ph.D. Minor in Social Science Research Methods, and their B.A. summa cum laude in Sociology from the University of Florida with a minor in Women’s Studies. Prior to joining the Emory faculty in 2013, Dr. Sewell held graduate teaching positions at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research and the University of Mannheim in Germany, where they innovated the pedagogy of quantifying ethnoraciality and racism.