Lynette Aria Jackson

Lynette Aria Jackson is a professor of African history and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a consultant and expert witness on African political asylum cases, and a long-time human rights, LGBTQ An umbrella acronym standing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning. Learn more rights, anti-racist and transnational feminist activist and public educator. Dr. Jackson co-directs the Critical Diaspora Studies Initiative, and has previously held the positions of Associate Provost of International Affairs and Chair of the International Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her Africa-related research has focused on Southern African medical and urban social history, the colonial and postcolonial politics of gender and sexuality, comparative forced migration, refugee and diaspora studies, and the contemporary regional histories of major refugee producing countries in the Great Lakes/Central Africa and the Northeast Africa/Horn of Africa.  She is the author of Surfacing Up: Psychiatry and Social Order in Colonial Zimbabwe.  (Cornell University Press, 2005) and numerous other articles and book chapters. Dr. Jackson is committed to creation and dissemination of knowledge towards the building of human empathy and understanding, human rights and social justice.