Advisory Boards

Heather Ann Thompson writes about, and consults regularly on, the history as well as present day implications of prisons, punishment and policing in the United States.

Below are the boards and commissions on which Thompson serves related to the subject of prisons, policing and other policy matters:

  • Advisory Board Member, Rights Behind Bars. Washington, DC. 2020

  • Advisory Board Member, Prisoner Legal Advocacy Network (PLAN). National Lawyers Guild—DE, NJ Chapter. 2020.

  • Project Team Co-Lead. “Conditions of Confinement” component project. Documenting Criminalization and Confinement Project. University of Michigan. 2020-present

  • Advisory Board Member. Mass Incarceration and Prison Studies database. Alexander Street Press, a Proquest company. 2019-present.

  • Board Member. Prison Creative Arts Program. 2019-present

  • Advisory Board, Alliance of Families for Justice, 2016-Present

  • Steering Committee. The Carceral State Project. University of Michigan. 2018-present

  • Co-Founder. The Carceral State Project. University of Michigan. 2017.

  • Literature for Justice Juror. The National Book Foundation. Literature for Justice Program. 2018.

  • Co-Founder Carceral State Project at the University of Michigan, 2018 Advisory Council Member. Art for Justice Fund. 2017-present

  • Square One Justice Project at Columbia University’s Justice Lab, “The Racial History of Criminal Justice. October, 2018.

  • Committee Member. Committee on Law and Justice. National Academies. Washington, DC. 2018-present

  • Planning/advisory board member: 75th anniversary conference on Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy to be sponsored by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library, and the Department of Economics at Columbia University. 2018-2019.

  • Advisor/Reviewer. City of Detroit, "The Neighborhoods" news service repository of publicly accessible history of the city. http://theneighborhoods.org/home

  • Diversity Scholars Network. Member. 2017-present

  • Partner/Speaker. Humanize the Numbers Project. The University of Michigan. 2015-2016

  • Advisory Board Member. Detroit Metropolitan Area Study Project. Institute for Social Research. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 2014-

  • Appointed, Humanities Scholar for the Humanities Action Lab’s nationally traveling, multi-platform public humanities project on the history and human experience of incarceration. The New School for Public Engagement. Consulting scholar for project April 2015 – January 2016.

  • Advisory Board Member. Media and the Movement: Journalism, Civil Rights, and Black Power in the American South. Duke University and the University of North Carolina’s Southern Oral History Program in the Center for the Study of the American South.

  • National Study Team Member. “The Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration in America.” Study funded by the National Academy of Sciences, The MacArthur Foundation, and the National Institute of Justice. Washington, D.C. Ongoing, 18 month study.

  • Appointed Advisory Panel Member, The Future of Work Initiative. Open Society Institute. New York City, NY. 2014

  • Advisor: Center for Community Change. 2014

  • Serving on panel of experts writing position paper on rebuilding the labor movement for the AFL-CIO: “The Future of Worker Representation.” Report to be presented to the AFL-CIO leadership at National Convention 2014.

  • Appointed Advisory Panel Member, Life of the Law Project. 2013

  • Board Member, Prison Policy Initiative, 2012

  • Member, Scholars Strategy Network. http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/