Amanda E. Lewis is the Director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and  College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on how race shapes educational opportunities and on how our ideas about race get negotiated in everyday life. As Director of IRRPP, she has co-authored a number of reports as part of the State of Racial Justice in Chicago project chronicling the experiences and conditions of racial/ethnic groups in the city.  Dr. Lewis lectures and consults regularly on issues of racial and educational equity and contemporary forms of racism.