Joanna Cardenas is a doctoral candidate in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research explores the nexus of critical carceral studies, disability studies, and Black feminist thought, with an emphasis on the intersection of race, class, gender, and space. Through a close spatial analysis of California prisons, her work traces how the state’s histories of human experimentation, sexual violence, and other forms of disabling violence inform the racialized and gendered organization of confinement. She also studies how the carceral state of South Central Los Angeles impacts Black and Latinx women, with a focus on surveillance and other policing practices. With a deep engagement in community-based research, she also investigates the experimentation of new surveillance and policing technologies in Skid Row, the Figueroa corridor, and broader Los Angeles. Beyond academia, Joanna is also actively involved in litigation challenging staff misconduct across California state prisons.
Department and Institution:
African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, UC Berkeley
Bio/CV:
