Inaugural Faculty Research Forum launches with history professor’s award-winning research

The College of Arts & Sciences has launched a new faculty speaker series designed to spotlight the innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship taking place across the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. 

The Faculty Research Forum provides a space for our Arts & Sciences community to share their research, knowledge, and practices, whether it’s a new scientific discovery, creative works or performances, or an award-winning publication.  

“It’s something I’ve been thinking of doing ever since I became the dean three years ago,” said Suzanne Raitt, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. “I want to encourage the spirit of research dissemination and exchange.” 

As the inaugural speaker, Brianna Nofil, assistant professor of history, gave a talk on Nov. 10 titled, “Immigration Detention and the Making of a Jail Bed Economy.” Nofil shared research from her award-winning book, “The Migrant’s Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration,” which has been featured in the New Yorker, The Financial Times, and NPR. The highly acclaimed book is the winner of the Organization of American Historians’ Ellis W. Hawley Prize and Frederick Jackson Turner Award, as well as the Immigration and Ethnic History Society’s First Book Award and Theodore Saloutos Book Award. 

“I was delighted to participate in the Faculty Research Forum to talk about the research in my first book,” Nofil said. “There are so many faculty doing remarkable work on migration across the College of Arts & Sciences and I’m excited to have more venues where we can talk to each other.” 

Nofil’s work examines the crucial role local governments have played in mass detention of migrants, dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, when rural localities began constructing detention facilities for Chinese immigrants as a means of securing more federal funds. 

“If you want to understand mass incarceration, you have to understand what’s happening in local jails, which are heavily influenced by local politics,” she said during her talk.  

With local governments acting as middlemen between the federal government and private carceral institutions, an underlying theme of Nofil’s book is that “local politics matters,” she said. 

Nofil’s presentation was followed by a brief Q&A from the audience in Ewell Hall.  

“This was a fantastic kick-off to our series,” Raitt said in closing. 

The Faculty Research Forum is open to tenured and tenure-eligible faculty from all disciplines across Arts & Sciences and open to faculty at all career stages. More information about the nomination criteria and the interest form can be found here.