The Prison Studies Project Leadership Team is a collection of activists, scholars, educators, and artists who together leverage their expertise into collective action.
Aaron Bray (he/him/homie) is the proud son of Carol Murray and proud native of Dorchester, MA. His mother and his community raised him to live his values. After surviving the school-to-prison pipeline as a product of METCO and Boston Public Schools, Aaron studied Sociology at Brandeis University to prepare for a career as a public defender. Upon graduating from Harvard Law and growing disenchanted with the lack of justice in the criminal legal system, he retired from the courtroom to study restorative practices as a teaching fellow at Georgetown Law. Trained and guided by the wisdom of community elders, Aaron has spent years serving as a restorative justice facilitator, educator and circle keeper for community-based organizations, institutions of higher education and carceral spaces across the country. Aaron currently serves as a lecturer at UCLA and Harvard Graduate School of Education as well as a consultant for the California Conference for Equality & Justice. Having engaged with the criminal legal system as a defendant, a criminal defense attorney and a prison professor, Aaron dreams of making his mother and his community proud by utilizing restorative practices to transform systems of oppression.
Janelle Fouché is a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, studying Education Policy & Program Evaluation. She is a Malcolm Wiener Ph.D. Scholar in Poverty and Justice in Harvard’s Inequality & Social Policy Program and a Partnering in Education Research Fellow at the Center for Education Policy Research. Her research interests lie at the intersection of the carceral system and education policy, as she believes the two are inextricably linked to issues of race, inequality, and opportunity. Janelle is a proud first-generation, low-income graduate of MIT, where she studied Economics and Management Science (with a concentration in Finance). Janelle is the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the Massachusetts Service Alliance (MSA), which builds the organizational capacity of hundreds of Massachusetts nonprofits, schools, and agencies through funding, training, and resources centered on volunteerism and service. Her JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion) working group ensures that MSA’s actions and how they utilize their resources are informed by the voices of historically marginalized groups. Additionally, Janelle serves as a resident advisor in one of Harvard’s undergraduate dorms, specializing in race & ethnicity programming and first-generation student support. For the past seven years, Janelle has tutored students in prisons, jails, and juvenile detention centers across Massachusetts. She has taught college-level courses, HiSET preparation, and elementary algebra, as well as facilitated working groups on storytelling and justice. Outside of her academic and professional pursuits, Janelle enjoys dancing with Soca Fusion and powerlifting with RX Strength Training.
Devon Gates is a musician and facilitator/educator passionate about bringing the arts to carceral spaces, and supporting work towards abolition across all disciplines. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, she attended Harvard College and Berklee College of Music, where she studied Social Anthropology and Jazz Performance, also co-facilitating a Music and Justice workshop at Nashua St. Jail through the Prison Studies Project.
Azmera Hammouri-Davis (she/hers) is a writer, artist, theologian and scholar-practitioner of the Afro-Brazilian martial art of Capoeira devoted to healing and transformation. Founder of Break The Boxes, she is a bi-lingual MICAH ministry fellow, Fulbright Creative and Performing Artist and creative leadership consultant with over twelve years of experience serving in higher education, community engagement, leadership development, mentorship and youth advocacy nationally and internationally. Azmera currently serves as director of organization strategy at Public Works Alliance for the Justice Serving Network, and manages the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference’s Sacred Fire Video Library project. With the Prison Studies Project team, Azmera led Storytelling and Justice programming for youth in the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services in her role as Community Partnership Lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. She also facilitated “A Conversation on Harm and Healing”, “A Conversation on Money, Power and Justice” and was a guest collaborator in the Music and Justice working group at Nashua Street Jail. Azmera received her Masters of Theological Studies in African/American Religions from Harvard Divinity School and a dual B.A. in Visual and Performing Arts and B.A. Social Sciences from the University of Southern California. You can connect with Azmera at linktr.ee/azmerarhymes
Elyse Martin-Smith (she/her) is in the Harvard College class of 2025 studying African American Studies and Social Studies with a focus in Black Artivism, the intersection of arts and activism. As a music artist and advocate for restorative justice, she aims to embody these values in practice. With the Prison Studies Project team, she has curated and co-facilitated courses in the DC Jail such as “Hip Hop and Trauma” and “Patriarchy, Hip Hop, and God,” looking at Hip Hophilosophy as a teaching tool. You can connect with Elyse at linktr.ee/elysems
Kaia Stern is the cofounder of the Prison Studies Project, which began at Harvard University in 2008. She is currently faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Director of Justice Initiatives at the Public Works Alliance. Kaia is the recipient of the 2018-2019 Radcliffe Fellowship and was the first Practitioner in Residence at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute where she led the Law, Education, and Justice focus area. From Sing Sing prison to The White House, her work is grounded in reimagining justice. She has taught extensively on liberation theology, ethics, and transformative justice, and is the author of Voices from American Prisons: Faith, Education, and Healing (Routledge, 2014). Kaia serves as a consultant to educational communities across the nation. She received her master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School and her PhD from Emory University. She is ordained as an interfaith minister and has been learning/teaching in and about U.S. jails and prisons for 30 years.
Rebecca Oluwatoyin Thompson is an educator, writer, and student of multiple disciplines and practices. In partnership with the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, she has taught and facilitated a variety of courses in carceral spaces across the United States that interrogate matters of race and gender through critical explorations of literature, art and pop culture. Her work gives attention to how people and communities heal, repair, and care for one another in the wake of disparate forms of racial, economic, gender, and environmental violence. Rebecca is an incoming Presidential Scholar in the Master of Divinity program at Harvard Divinity School where she will explore how art, education and spiritual practice inform one another. She is currently working on a comic and public education campaign about mass incarceration as the 2022-23 Applied Cartooning Fellow at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Rebecca is also a researcher for ANO Institute for Arts and Knowledge, a cultural institution based in Accra, Ghana.
Sameen Wajid earned her masters in International Education Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She strongly believes that everyone has the right to access quality education and is working to ensure that people who are or were formerly incarcerated are included in that conversation. Sameen graduated from Austin College with a B.A. in Sociology and Political Science. She globetrotted from teaching at an orphanage in Pakistan to studying social and political conflict in Ireland to pursuing a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship on the island of Borneo. Utilizing her project management, data analysis, and communications background, Sameen currently serves as Programme Officer at UNICEF and a task team member on the organization’s internal task team on Anti-Racism and Discrimination.
Bruce Western is the cofounder of the Prison Studies Project, which began at Harvard University in 2008. He is the Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice and Co-Director of the Justice Lab at Columbia University. His research has examined the causes, scope, and consequences of the historic growth in U.S. prison populations. Western is also the Principal Investigator of the Square One Project that aims re-imagine the public policy response to violence under conditions of poverty and racial inequality. He is the author of Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison (Russell Sage Foundation, 2018), and Punishment and Inequality in America (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar, and a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. Western received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and was born in Canberra, Australia.