Rashawn Ray, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator

Rashawn Ray, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator, is Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland (UMD), founder and Executive Director of UMD’s Lab for Social Science Research (LASSR), a current David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute, and a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Ray’s research addresses the mechanisms that manufacture and maintain racial and social inequality with an emphasis on police–civilian relations, among other issues. Under Dr. Ray’s direction, LASSR has conducted implicit bias trainings with thousands of police officers, completed 300 interviews with officers and civilians, and developed a virtual reality training program to improve officer decision-making that has been used in nearly 10 departments nationwide. Dr. Ray also has discussed police reform with congressional, state, and local leaders across the country. He has authored more than 50 books, articles, and book chapters including another edition of Race and Ethnic Relations in the 21st Century: History, Theory, Institutions, and Policy, which has been adopted close to 40 times in college courses. Dr. Ray was awarded the 2016 UMD Research Communicator Award. In addition, he has appeared on CNN, C–Span, MSNBC, HLN, Al Jazeera, NPR, and Fox. Dr. Ray’s great-uncle was the first Black police chief in Murfreesboro, Tenn.