Biography
Dr. Sharon Wright Austin is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on African-American women’s political behavior, African-American mayoral elections, rural African-American political activism, and African-American political behavior. She is the author of five academic books: Race, Power, and Political Emergence in Memphis; The Transformation of Plantation Politics: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta; The Caribbeanization of Black Politics: Race, Group Consciousness, and Political Participation in America; Beyond Racial Capitalism: Cooperatives in the African Diaspora (co-edited with Caroline Shenaz Hossein and Kevin Edmonds); and the Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors edited volume. She has also published several book chapters and articles and was the first African American editor of the American Political Science Review. In 2024, she self-published her first children’s book entitled Allan Learns to Talk which discusses her family’s experiences with nonverbal autism. Currently, she is completing Say It to My Face: Black Women, Social Justice, and the Presidency and is also conducting research on the Byron Donalds gubernatorial campaign. Her twitter handle is @SharonA82707528 and her Instagram handle is polssda. She is also on Linked In and Facebook.
Degrees
