Jennifer Hamilton

With a regional emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa, my research focuses broadly on internalized racism and its implications for political economy of development. Internalized racism is an individual-level psychological phenomenon wherein non-White individuals implicitly or explicitly adopt racist attitudes, ideologies, and behaviors perpetuated by dominant White power structures. African scholars and activists repeatedly emphasize internalized racism as a pervasive, persistent, and pernicious legacy of colonial rule, but existing political science literature overlooks this phenomenon as explanation for underdevelopment. My research emphasizes concerns that African scholars and activists raise while applying contemporary social science methodologies for large scale measurement and causal identification in an ethically sensitive manner. 

My research is supported by the National Science Foundation. Additional collaborative projects are funded by the Center for Effective Global Action, the National Opinion Research Center, and UCLA's Bendari Kindness Institute. I received my PhD in Poltical Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.