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I’m Mia Karisa Dawson, an urban human geographer and educator. Since receiving my doctorate in Geography with an emphasis in African American studies in 2023 from the University of California, Davis, I received postdoctoral awards from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I study joint crises in housing, policing, and incarceration in U.S. cities. My work engages with the Black Radical Tradition and contemporary abolitionisms to understand practices of direct action, mutual aid, and self-determination that represent revolutionary responses to these crises.

My doctoral research was grounded in community partnerships to understand and intervene in relationships of race, policing, and the urban environment. With the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, I contributed to the development of community-based violence interruption programs and alternative first response systems. As a research partner with Decarcerate Sacramento, I contributed to a coalition of community organizations across U.S. cities working to abolish incarceration. With a background in environmental justice, I worked with the UC Davis Center for Regional Change to study racial disparities in air and water quality in California and contributed to policy recommendations and interventions.

My work has been published in journals including Urban Geography, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Frontiers in Public Health, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, and Water Alternatives. My work has been supported by organizations including the Mellon Research Initiative on Racial Capitalism, the Society of Women Geographers, the American Association of Geographers, the Mellon Public Scholars Program, the University of Georgia Community Mapping Lab, the Switzer Environmental Leadership Foundation, and the UC Santa Cruz Visualizing Abolition program. Above all, my work is supported by an incredible community of friends, scholars, organizers, and visionaries.