Kevin J.A. Thomas is a Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Sociology, as well as the Director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at The University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on international migration, global health, racial and ethnic inequality, children and families, as well as development and social change in Africa.

Thomas has received several awards including the Ray Lombra Award for Distinction in the Social Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University, and the Outstanding Book Award of the American Sociological Association’s Peace, War, and Social Conflict section. Thomas is the author of three books, Diverse Pathways: Race and the Socioeconomic Incorporation of Black, White, and Arab-origin Africans in the US (Michigan State University Press); Contract Workers, Risk, and the War in Iraq: Sierra Leonean Labor Migrants at US military bases (McGill-Queen’s University Press), and Global Epidemics, Local Implications: African Immigrants and the Ebola crisis in Dallas (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Thomas obtained his Ph.D. in Demography at the University of Pennsylvania and has a Masters degree from the same institution. After completing his doctoral work, he served as a post-doctoral fellow at both the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Harvard Initiative for Global Health. Dr. Thomas was also a faculty member at the Pennsylvania State University.