Bio

 Claire is a Georgia native. She is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California in Political Science and International Relations. She received her BA in International Affairs and Africana Studies from George Washington University and her MA in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University. While in DC, Claire interned with the State Department, in the Office of U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan and the Office of Consular Affairs, and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

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She is currently working on her dissertation project, “Hum So the Devil Doesn’t Hear You: Southern Black Rural Political Existences in the In Between,” an interdisciplinary study that attempts to deeply understand how we can consider otherwise possibilities of democratic engagement as practiced in the murmurs, the breaks of speech, the hums, and vibrations within the uniqueness of Black rural Southern life. 

Her broad research interests are social movements, decolonial theory, transitional justice, and political identity formation. Her research is anchored in traditions of critical theory and Black radicalism, with a deep commitment to emancipatory discourse around civic engagement and political participation. Specifically, she studies how song and protest can expand the notion of the political, through her study of Black Liberation movements. Claire also explores what ideas Black millennials in the United States and South Africa have inherited about freedom and citizenry in post-violence and post-transitional justice settings.