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Sociology Faculty

Naya Jones
  • Title
    • Assistant Professor & Core Faculty in Global and Community Health Program
  • Division Social Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Sociology Department
  • Phone
    831-502-8157
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Rachel Carson College Academic Building, 322
  • Mail Stop Rachel Carson College Faculty Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High St.
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise African Diaspora, African American / Black Studies, Agroecology and Agriculture, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Environmental Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, Social Justice

Research Interests

Black geographies of community health, economy, and healing; race/racism and health; embodied geographies; practices and aesthetics of traditional medicine; local and indigenous environmental knowledge; food sovereignty; critical and embodied pedagogy; arts-based methods; African-American and Afro-Latinx Studies

Biography, Education and Training

2016 / PhD, Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin

2008 / MA, Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin

2003 / BA, English Rhetoric & Spanish, University of Puget Sound 

Selected Publications

Journal Articles 

  • Jones, N. 2019. Dying to Eat? Black Food Geographies of Slow Violence and Resilience. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies,18 (5), 1076-99. Open Access >>
  • Cotter, E, and Jones, N. 2019. Review of Latino/Latinx Participants in Mindfulness-Based Intervention Research. Mindfulness 11, 529-553.
  • Thomas, KD and Jones, N. Critical Reflexivity: Teaching About Race and Racism in the Advertising Classroom. Advertising & Society Quarterly, 20 (2).
  • Jones, N. 2018. “It Tastes Like Heaven”: Critical Food Pedagogy with Black Youth in the Anthropocene. Policy Futures in Education, 17(7), 905-923.

Peer-Reviewed Essays & Interventions

  • Jones, N. 2020. Intervention: Corner Stores, Surveillance, and All Black Afterlives. Antipode Online. Open Access >>

Book Chapters

  • Jones, N. 2019. Revisiting the Corner Store: Black Youth, Food Geographies, and Gentrification. In  Race in the Marketplace: Crossing Critical Boundaries, Johnson, GD, Thomas, KD, Harrison, A, Grier, SA. (Eds.) Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.   
  • Jones, N. 2019. Receta for Radical Wholeness. In Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Practices, Medina, L and Gonzalez,MR (Eds.) Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.