Kevin J.A. Thomas, PhD
Professor — Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies

Contact
- E-mail: kjthomas@austin.utexas.edu
- Office: GWB 3.116
- Campus Mail Code: E3400
Biography
Kevin J.A. Thomas is Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his Ph.D. in Demography at the University of Pennsylvania and has a Masters degree from the same institution. After completing his doctoral work, he served as a post-doctoral fellow at both the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Harvard Initiative for Global Health. Thomas’s research focuses on international migration, racial and ethnic inequality, children and families, as well as development and social change in Africa. His work on these issues has appeared in journals including Demography, International Migration Review, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Social Science Research. He served on the 2014 National Academy of Sciences panel on the integration of immigrants in the US, and on its 2015 panel on the educational success of young English language learners. Dr Thomas is the author of three 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), and Global Epidemics, Local Implications: African Immigrants and the Ebola crisis in Dallas (Johns Hopkins University Press).