Jaden Janak

Jaden A.K. Janak (they/them/theirs) is a second-year PhD student in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. They serve as both a Research Fellow with the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and a Donald D. Harrington Graduate Fellow. Their research involves the intersections of prison abolition, the Black Radical Tradition, hip-hop feminism, and Black Power. Janak is the author of "Fierce Urgency of Now: Protecting Trans People Within the Criminal [In]Justice System," published by the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. They are also a regular contributor to two Black publications in the hometown of Tulsa: The Tulsa Star and The Oklahoma Eagle. This past summer they coordinated a partnership between The Oklahoma Eagle—the oldest Black newspaper in Oklahoma— and the Oklahoma Historical Society. As a result of this historic partnership, The Oklahoma Eagle’s archive will be digitized and made publicly available via OCR technology by 2021, which is the 100 year anniversary of both the paper and the Tulsa Race Massacre. Janak graduated with their BA in African American Studies from Saint Louis University.