Samantha Davis

Samantha Davis (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the George Washington University. She graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2022 where she studied Global Studies and Public Policy. Sam is a social movements scholar focusing on how the modern prison abolitionist movement is an example of relational politics.

She examines how carceral logic is actualized as an outward phenomenon through prisons, policing, and surveillance. As well as, internally, through collective and personal narratives surrounding deservingness, worth, and dignity. She explores how questions of freedom, belonging, and spirit create culture.

Her work transcends the boundaries of the U.S. nation-state by articulating the direct connection between the United State’s mass incarceration and the Transatlantic slave trade. By highlighting the wisdom in people’s own stories, understandings, and perceptions of autonomy from within and outside the United States. She hopes her dissertation will contribute to a lineage of activist academics working towards liberation.