Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey, Ph.D.

Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Georgia State University, and the Pre-Ph.D. Faculty Associate for the Center for the Advancement of Students and Alumni (CASA). At the CASA, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey serves as a mentor, and guides students through the graduate application process. Her support includes researching and identifying the best graduate schools for Georgia State University students interested in Pre-Ph.D. pathways. She also works with students who seek assistance on how to structure and successfully write personal statements. Additionally, providing strategies for requesting letters of recommendations, reviewing final applications before submission, sharing resources on graduate related activities and programs, and developing lectures which cover various aspects of the graduate application experience is also part of her portfolio.

Dr. Bonnette-Bailey’s 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 Black popular culture and social justice in a forthcoming co-edited volume (with Jonathan Gayles) entitled Black Popular Culture and Social Justice: Beyond the Culture (Routledge Press).

Dr. Bonnette-Bailey’s previous research examined the impact of political rap music on racial attitudes. She also has a forthcoming co-edited volume (with Adolphus Belk Jr.) entitled For the Culture:  Hip-Hop and Social Justice (University of Michigan Press, 2022), which examines the relationships between Hip-Hop culture and social justice. Additionally, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey published in 2015, a book with the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, Pulse of the People:  Rap Music and Black Political Attitudes.

Dr. Bonnette-Bailey has written numerous articles, including those published in Ethnic Studies Review, New Political Science, and Du Bois Review. She has written chapters in Contemporary Public Policy and Social Development in the Post-Civil Rights Era: Through the Prism of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream, and Oxford’s Handbook on Protest Music (forthcoming).

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. In addition, she received a 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 across various podcasts servers. Finally, 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.  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, TheGrio and numerous other news outlets.