Campus Directory

Pronouns she, her, her, hers, herself

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Sociology Department

Title Assistant Professor & Core Faculty in Global and Community Health Program

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Environmental Studies Department

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Areas of Expertise African Diaspora
African American / Black Studies
Environmental Studies
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Latin American and Latino Studies
Social Justice

Web Site

Primary Office Location Rachel Carson College Academic Building
322

Mail Stop Rachel Carson College Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Primary Care Research - Medical College of Wisconsin

PhD, Geography & the Environment -  University of Texas at Austin

MA, Latin American Studies - University of Texas at Austin

Summary of Expertise

Research Interests

Black geographies of health and healing (especially North and Latin America); Black ecologies; spirituality and the environment; relational approaches to Black, Latinx, and Indigenous geographies; human-plant relations; botanical medicine; healing justice; critical pedagogies; somatic or embodied pedagogies; autoethnography and testimonio; arts-based methods.

Awards, Honors and Grants

Selected Recent Awards/Grants

2023-2024 | Excellence in Teaching Award (UC Santa Cruz - Academic Senate's Committee on Teaching)

2021-2022 | Sprout Grant (UCSC Institute for Social Transformation)

2020-2021 | Anne S. Chatham Fellowship for Medicinal Botany (Garden Club of America) 

2020-2021 | Folk Arts Apprenticeship Grant w/ Ms. Angela Smith (Wisconsin Arts Board)

2017-2020 | Culture of Health Leader (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)

Selected Publications

• Jones, N. 2023. "We Were Dreamt: Reflections on Black Dreaming as a Liberatory Practice." The Arrow. Access >>

• Jones, N. 2023. "Reimagining Freire: Beyond Human Relations." Cultural Studies of Science Education, 18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-023-10154-7

• Hirsch, L. and Jones, N. 2021. "Incontestable: Imagining Possibilities through Intimate Black Geographies." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Access >>   

• Jones, N. 2021. "Prologue: Black Dream Geographies." Part of themed intervention in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Access>>

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

• Jones, N. 2019. "Dying to Eat? Black Food Geographies of Slow Violence and Resilience." In 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.

• Thomas, KD and Jones, N. 2019. "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." In Policy Futures in Education, 17(7), 905-923.  

Selected Recordings

The Checkout // Podcast Interview On Food Sovereignty and Collective Healing