​Sophia Jordán Wallace

WISIR Director
Field Director for Latino Politics and Immigration
sophiajw@uw.edu 

​Sophia Jordán Wallace is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Stuart A. and Lee D. Scheingold Endowed Faculty Fellow in Social Justice at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her research interests include the politics of race and ethnicity, Latino politics, immigration politics and policy, public opinion, and legislative politics.

She is the co-author of Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Race and Immigration Policy in the Trump Era (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Her work has been published in various journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, International Migration Review, Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, among others. She is currently working on two books. One is entitled, United We Stand: Latino Representation in Congress. The other is called, Immigration Reform: Failure and Success in Congress. Her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Dirksen Center, and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

Megan Ming Francis

Field Director for History and Political Development
meganmf@uw.edu

Megan Ming Francis is an Associate Professor of Political Science and an Adjunct Professor of Law, Societies, and Justice at the University of Washington. Francis specializes in the study of American politics, with broad interests in criminal punishment, Black political activism, philanthropy, and the post-civil war South. She is the author of the award winning book, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State. Francis is currently working on two book projects: (1) ‘Crimes of Capitalism’ examines the role of the criminal punishment system in the rebuilding of southern political and economic power after the Civil War and (2) ‘How to Fund a Movement’ examines the history and future of philanthropy’s complicated relationship with social movements. In addition, her research and commentary have been featured in numerous academic and public outlets, including a popular TED talk.

Jack Turner

Field Director for Political Theory
jturner3@uw.edu

Jack Turner is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. He specializes in American political thought, critical race theory, democratic theory, and liberalism and its critics. He is the author of Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America (University of Chicago Press, 2012). With Melvin L. Rogers, he co-edited African American Political Thought: A Collected History (University of Chicago Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including Political Theory, Raritan, Modern Intellectual History, and Polity. His latest article, “Audre Lorde’s Anti-Imperial Consciousness,” was recently published in Political Theory. He currently sits on the editorial boards of Journal of Politics and American Political Thought, and has previously sat on the editorial boards of American Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, and Politics, Groups, and Identities. He is writing a new book titled Existential Democracy: Death and Politics in Walt Whitman.