Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and author of the award-winning book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, among many other publications. Her work investigates the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and inequity, health and justice, knowledge and power.
She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the MacArthur Fellowship for “illuminating how technology reflects and reproduces social inequality and championing the role of imagination in social transformation. She’s also received the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton. Her book, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, winner of the 2023 Stowe Prize for Literary Activism, was born out of the twin plagues of COVID-19 and police violence and offers a practical and principled approach to transforming our communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.
