Jamal Brooks-Hawkins

Jamal Brooks-Hawkins is a third-year Gender Studies PhD student at Arizona State University in the School of Social Transformation.  He received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree in Theatre Studies at DePaul University with minors in Sociology and Women Studies. Mr. Brooks-Hawkins obtained a Master of Social Work focused Policy, Administration, and Community Practice in 2017.  

Mr. Brooks-Hawkins has worked in several community-based organizations, including the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence as a Sexual Violence Prevention Coordinator. He has worked as direct service staff and management in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment. Over the years Mr. Brooks-Hawkins has served on many state and local advisory groups, such as the Arizona Statewide Advisory Group for HIV/AIDS, the LGBTQ Consortium, the GSM statewide advisory board and was a member of the Black AIDS Taskforce. Mr. Brooks-Hawkins served as Chair for the Zero Stigma Committee and a member at large for the City of Phoenix Fast Track Cities initiative.  He is currently the Vice-Chair for the board of directors at Ebony House Integrated Health Inc. in Phoenix, AZ.   Mr. Brooks-Hawkins is a 2016 Heart Award recipient from Aunt Rita’s HIV/AIDS foundation. He is a 2019-2020 Leading for Change Fellow and awarded an Interdisciplinary Enrichment Fellowship from the Graduate College at ASU.  In 2021, Mr. Brooks-Hawkins was one of five Race Relation Scholars at ASU School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies.  This year Mr. Brooks-Hawkins is the Graduate and Professional Student Association Assembly President and the President of the Gender Studies Graduate Student Association at ASU.

In 2017, Mr. Brooks-Hawkins was a Global Development Research Scholars spending four months in Durban, South Africa at the University of Witwatersrand conducting secondary analysis on the Evaluation of the National South African Female Condom Distribution Program.  Mr. Brooks-Hawkins participates in research by assisting Dr. Marlon M. Bailey on an upcoming manuscript, an ethnographic study of Black gay men’s sexual subjectivities.  Mr. Brooks-Hawkins is a 2021 Dr. James A. Ferguson RISE Fellow, when he interned at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with the HIV Prevention Youth & Gender Team.  At the CDC, Mr. Brooks-Hawkins worked on a Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Quality Assurance facility assessment conducted in multiple sub-Saharan African countries.

Mr. Brooks-Hawkins research focuses on the quotidian constructions and expressions of race, gender, sexuality and how these expressions connect to pleasure, desire and joy.  Additional research interests include performance and policy, specifically in regard to justice equity diversity and inclusion of gender and sexual minorities in the African diaspora.   His dissertation explores narratives and use value of Black queer masculinities to representation, intervention sciences and humanistic approaches to public health.