BIOGRAPHY

Kevin J.A. Thomas is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rice University and the Director of the  Houston Population Research Center, Demography at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. He obtained his Ph.D. in Demography at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on international migration, global health, racial and ethnic inequality, children and families, as well as development and social change in Africa. His current research projects examine the outcomes of the children of STEM graduates, children in adoptive families, foreign-born graduates in the STEM workforce, trends in legal immigrant admissions to the United States, and the implications of race-ethnic minority status for the social incorporation of Black immigrants. Dr. Thomas has received several awards, including the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, the Ray Lombra Award for Distinction in the Social Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University, and the Outstanding Book Award of the American Sociological Association’s Peace, War, and Social Conflict section. Dr Thomas has also published dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles and is the author of four books - Diverse Pathways: Race and the Socioeconomic Incorporation of Black, White, and Arab-origin Africans in the US (Michigan State University Press); Contract Workers, Risk, and the War in Iraq: Sierra Leonean Labor Migrants at US military bases (McGill-Queen’s University Press); Global Epidemics, Local Implications: African Immigrants and the Ebola crisis in Dallas (Johns Hopkins University Press); and Life After Epidemics: Ebola Survivors and the Social Dimensions of Recovery (In press, Johns Hopkins University Press).