The CRIS and the Urban School of Sciences Po are pleased to invite you to the presentation of the new book by Sanyu A. Mojola, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and Maurice P. During Professor of Demographic Studies at Princeton University. 

Chair: Clément Boisseuil (Associate Researcher, Sciences Po - CEE) - Discussant: Sophia Noel (PhD Candidate, Sciences Po - CRIS)

Why and how does racial health inequality persist and get reproduced? Throughout its history, Washington D.C., the capital of the United States, has had many of the nation’s worst epidemics, including maternal and infant mortality, homicide, heroin overdoses, and HIV/AIDS. And these epidemics have disproportionately affected African Americans.  Starting from the city’s founding in the late 1700s until the present, and drawing from multiple sources, including archival and spatial material, Census, vital statistics and disease surveillance data, and life history and key informant interviews, this book illustrates how the city’s physical, social and policy design contributed to the production and reproduction of disproportionate death among African Americans.

Brief bio

Sanyu A. Mojola is Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and the Maurice P. During Professor of Demographic Studies at Princeton University. She directed Princeton’s Office of Population Research between July 2020 –June 2024. 

Her mixed methods research examines how societies produce health and illness, with a particular focus on the HIV/AIDS pandemic as it unfolds in various settings such as Kenya, South Africa and the US. She has investigated how social dynamics within schools, communities, labor markets, cities and eco-systems can lead to health inequality. She is especially interested in how the life course, gender, race/ethnicity and socio-economic status shape health outcomes. Her publications include an award-winning book - Love, Money and HIV: Becoming a Modern African Woman in the Age of AIDS - as well as articles that have appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Gender and Society,  Demography, Social Science and Medicine and Journal of Marriage and Family.  

Her second book, Death by Design: Producing Racial Health Inequality in the Shadow of the Capitol will be out on October 28th and is available from University of California press or Amazon. She is currently on sabbatical as a visiting professor at the Center for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS) at Sciences Po, Paris, where she is beginning to work on her third book on aging, health and social change in rural post-apartheid South Africa.