Raja Staggers-Hakim

Assistant Professor of Sociology

Dr. Staggers-Hakim is an Assistant Professorin the Department of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her scholarship focuses on the intersections of race, racism, oppression, and health. Dr. Staggers-Hakim examines the impacts of social stratification/inequality, environmental injustice, and more recently police brutality on health outcomes in racial ethnic, low income, and marginalized populations. Her research has considered state sanctioned and community violence on health outcomes in African American / Black and Latino communities. Currently, her scholarship assesses the exposure to racism on health behaviors and coping strategies in African Americans. Staggers-Hakim’s work has appeared in the Journal of Human Behavior and the Social Environment, Praeger Handbook of Environmental Health, and Western New England Law Review. Her book Profiled Life: A Systems Approach to Understanding the Foundations and Persistence of Racism in America (2022) considers outcomes experienced by people of color, including mortality/morbidity, academic achievement, income and wealth, prison rates, and infectious and chronic disease occurences, through the lens of social systems. 

Education:

Ph.D., Howard University 

MPH, New York University 

B.A., Howard University