LeShae Henderson is a Paul S. Lazarsfeld fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Sociology at Columbia University (degree expected 2025). Through the sociologies of race, punishment, inequality, and Indigenous studies, she asks how the law and social institutions construct racial categories; how people navigate and experience those categories; and how those categories shape socioeconomic and health outcomes. Trained as a mixed methods researcher, her work seesk to uncover pathways to more equitable, just, and liberated communities.
LeShae’s dissertation project uses Hawai’i’s prison system as a case study to understand how indigeneity is defined, utilized, and experienced in prison. Drawing from interviews, legal documents, and 250 issues of prisoner produced newspapers, she explores how Native Hawaiian cultural practices and identities persist in an institution that is historically meant to “strip away the self.” Another vein of her research examines the relationship between racialized mass incarceration and inequality. In her current project, she studies the health of incarcerated people through the lens of community wellbeing.
Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship, the Reducing Inequality Network, and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. Before beginning her doctoral studies, LeShae worked at the Vera Institute of Justice. She also helped produce the Decarcerated Podcast. LeShae received her B.A. in Sociology from Harvard College.
LeShae’s work is deeply informed by her roles as a proud Black and Native Hawaiian scholar, a big sister, an aunty, and a hula dancer.