Jelani Ince, Assistant Professor, has been selected as a Fellow in the Russell Sage Foundation’s (RSF) Visiting Scholars Program. RSFs Visiting Scholars Program is one of the preeminent fellowships of its kind within the social sciences. The fellowship provides a unique opportunity for select scholars in the social, economic, political and behavioral sciences to pursue their data analysis and writing while in residence at the foundation’s headquarters in New York City.
Ince will use evidence from a two-year (2018-2020) ethnography of Risen Church, an interracial church in St. Louis, Missouri, to examine why DEI initiatives fail despite explicit commitments to their successful implemenation. Ince will us ethnographic, interview, and administrative data to develop a sociological theory of philanthropic capture; a structural condition in which philanthropic organizations tether diversity missions to preferences of elite donors.
Ince will also interrogate how to account for local activity, agency, and change without reverting to the kind of individualism that sociological approaches to studying organizations were designed to critique.
Congratulations, Dr. Ince!