Camille Z. Charles, professor of sociology and Africana studies in the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania, has been named as a 2013-14 Fellow by the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law & Justice at New York University. Each year, the Institute brings Fellows from around the world to facilitate high level research and scholarship on topics falling within a broad definition of law and justice. This year, the fellows will address the topic “Racial, Ethnic and Economic Segregation.”

Charles, who also holds a secondary appointment in Penn’s Graduate School of Education, is the author of numerous publications and books, including Won’t You Be My Neighbor: Race, Class and Residence in Los Angeles and The Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America’s Selective Colleges and Universities. Her research interests are in urban inequality, racial attitudes and intergroup relations, racial residential segregation, minorities in higher education and racial identity. She is a member of the editorial boards of the American Sociological Review and the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race and a past chair of the Penn Faculty Senate.

During her fellowship, Charles will complete a book-length manuscript on the diversity of black students at selective colleges and universities in the United States. She will also work to develop a longer-term project that explores racial inequality in Philadelphia, modeled theoretically and methodologically after W.E.B. Du Bois’ classic study The Philadelphia Negro. The use of mapping and spatial statistics will be an important component of the project, as well as the production of policy-relevant scholarship and the training of undergraduate and graduate students in the social sciences.