DOMINIQUE
ADAMS-SANTOS
Postdoctoral Senior Research Fellow &
Associate Director of the Center for Racial Justice
at the Ford School of Public Policy
I am a QWOC feminist sociologist deeply intrigued by questions related to race, gender, sexuality, and intimacy in the digital era. My work seeks to document and understand how queer women of color create/undo/sustain identities, relationships, and communities in urban-digital spheres.
BIO
Dominique Adams-Santos, PhD is the associate director of the Center for Racial Justice at the Ford School of Public Policy and an Anti-Racism Collaborative Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Center for Institutional Diversity. Additionally, she serves as special assistant to the associate dean for academic affairs. In 2021, she earned her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University, where she also completed a certificate in gender and sexuality studies. She received her B.A. in Sociology (minor in African American Studies) at Smith College, where she graduated with honors and cum laude in 2013. She is a qualitative researcher who centers questions of sexuality, intimacy, and belonging in the digital era. Specifically, through privileging the stories of everyday people, she seeks to understand how individuals navigate the racial, gender, and sexual politics of digital and urban landscapes in their search for intimacy and community. As a queer woman of color scholar, Dominique is especially invested in mapping the contours of placemaking among racialized and gendered sexual minorities, the subject of her dissertation project. She lives in the Metro Detroit area with her wife and many houseplants.
PROJECTS
Current & Past
"We tell our stories in order to live."
Joan Didion
CHICAGO QUEER
WOMEN OF COLOR
PROJECT
Through multi-method qualitative analysis using interviews and urban and digital ethnography, this project explores how Black queer women navigate and respond to spatial marginalization in Chicago. Specifically, I examine the intersectional contours that shape Black queer women’s experiences living in Chicago, including the structural and cultural factors that limit and facilitate intimacy and community. I forward intimacy mapping as a critical intervention and methodological framework to empirically capture Black queer women’s intimacy practices at the intersection of the urban and the digital.
QUEER BLACK WOMEN ON YOUTUBE
Using an intersectional approach to narrative analysis, this article investigates the performative and discursive strategies that 50 women use in telling their coming-out stories on YouTube. Findings show that queer Black women’s use of intimate candor—the performative and discursive strategy of publicly revealing interior, often sexually explicit, aspects of the self—is a means through which women center desire and queerness; articulate a vision of queer Black womanhood; and complicate the coming-out formula.
DESIRING TECHNOLOGIES:
BLACK WOMEN &
DATING APPS
We are seeking Black women, 18-35, who are in college or college graduates to participate in a focus group to discuss how they use technology such as mobile apps to navigate dating. Contact us at desiringtech@gmail.com for more information or to enroll!
EDUCATION
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
2015 - 2021
Dominique earned her PhD in Sociology at Northwestern University in 2021. She holds a certificate from the Gender & Sexuality Studies Program and was a SPAN (Sexualities Project at Northwestern) Dissertation Fellow.
SMITH COLLEGE
2009 - 2013
Dominique proudly earned her B.A. in Sociology and African American Studies from Smith College, graduating with honors and cum laude.
TEACHING
DESIGNED COURSES
Sex and the Digital City
Digital Ethnographic Methods
Queer Subjectivities: Race, Gender, and Sexuality
COURSES TAUGHT
Race & Society
College Teaching Seminar
Global Social Movements
LET’S CONNECT
