My research and teaching focus on race & racism, space & place, urban education, and qualitative research methods. My forthcoming book considers how Black long-term residents experience and respond to gentrification in a historically Black neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. I have also published work about school choice and the reproduction of inequality in urban school districts.

I completed a Ph.D. in sociology and education at the University of Pennsylvania, a M.S.Ed. in education policy at the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in anthropology at Amherst College. My research has been supported by the Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship Program.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

Evans, Shani Adia. 2021. In Press. “I wanted diversity but not so much” Middle Class White Parents, School Choice, and the Persistence of Anti-Black Stereotypes, Urban Education

Evans, Shani Adia. 2020. "When Schools Choose: Evaluation and Inequality in Education.” Sociological Quarterly 61(3):1-21.

Bader, Michael; Annette Lareau; Shani Adia Evans. 2019. “Talk on the Playground: The Neighborhood Context for School Choice.” City and Community 18(2):483-508.

Lareau, Annette; Shani Adia Evans; April Yee. 2016. “The Rules of the Game and the Uncertain Transmission of Advantage: Middle-class Parents’ Search for an Urban Kindergarten.” Sociology of Education 89(4):279-299.