Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey is a Professor of Africana Studies at Georgia State University and the Co-Director for the Center for the Advancement of Students and Alumni (CASA). Her research interests include Hip Hop culture, popular culture, political behavior, political attitudes, African-American politics, Black women and Politics, political psychology and public opinion.
Her current research examines the relationship between political rap music and racial attitudes in a book (with Adolphus Belk, Jr) tentatively titled, Check the Rhyme: Political Rap Music and Racial Attitudes (New York University Press).
She recently published a co-edited volume with Jonathan Gayles entitled Black Popular Culture and Social Justice: Beyond the Culture (Routledge Press 2023). Dr. Bonnette-Bailey has also published a co-edited volume with Adolphus Belk Jr entitled For the Culture: Hip-Hop and Social Justice (University of Michigan Press, 2022) examining the relationships between Hip-Hop culture and social justice. Additionally, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey published (2015) a book with the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, Pulse of the People: Rap Music and Black Political Attitudes.
Dr. Bonnette-Bailey has published over 5 articles and 7 book chapters in addition to the three books she has authored. These articles have been published in a variety of journals including the journals, Ethnic Studies Review, New Political Science, and Du Bois Review. She is also the winner of numerous awards including the Provost’s Outstanding Tenure Track Faculty Achievement Award (2023) and their Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) (2022) award as well as the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Faculty Diversity Award (2020). Currently, she serves as the Co-Principal Investigator on two Mellon Foundation grants “Intersectionality in the American South,” and the “Humanities Inclusivity Program,” totaling over 2 million dollars.
In 2017, she hosted the first political Hip Hop conference at Georgia State University entitled, Behind the Music: Hip Hop and Social Justice, which examined the ways in which social justice is addressed and expressed within Hip Hop culture. In 2018, she was a Nasir Jones/ W. E. B. Du Bois Hip-Hop Fellow with the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Later that year she completed two talks in Ingelheim and Kaiserslautern, Germany discussing the relevance and importance of rap music, activism and social justice and she received her certificate in psychoanalysis from Emory University’s Psychoanalytic Institute.
In 2019, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey presented at TedX talk entitled “The Political Impact of Rap Music” and in 2020, she hosted Beyond the Culture: Black Popular Culture and Social Justice at Georgia State University. In 2021, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey founded the podcast The Intersection: Where Black Popular Culture Meets Social Justice, which can be found on all of your podcasts servers. Also, in 2021 Dr. Bonnette-Bailey appeared in the Bounce Network original documentary Protect or Neglect, where she discussed the history of policing and the disparities within the Black community and on February 23, 2023 was featured in the ABC news documentary titled Rap Trap: Hip-Hop on Trial which aired on Hulu. Finally, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey curated the second iteration of the conference Beyond the Culture II in February 2023. Dr. Bonnette-Bailey has been interviewed by numerous news outlets including VOX, the AJC, CBS 46, Washington Post, W.A.B.E., BBC, Atlanta Magazine, ABC News, 11 Alive News, and TheGrio among many other news outlets.