Dr. Shaneda Destine is an Assistant Professor with a dual appointment in Sociology and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr. Destine’s research focus is race, gender, sexuality, and contemporary social movements. She is most interested in how state violence effects the livelihood of marginalized people. She investigates forms of resistance of Black women and Black Queer people, as they create spaces of Black Joy and Respite, while struggling for liberation. Her research highlights the unique ways Black women and femmes are affected by state violence and the ways in which they strategize and negotiate organizing, leading and caring for themselves and movement participants, as part of their political practice. Dr. Destine’s work is theoretically informed by Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and Black Radical Social Movement Theory. Her goal is to further the notion that race, gender, class, and sexuality act as vectors of oppressions central to the sustaining global capitalism and systemic oppression, particularly through state violence.