UK Law Professor Receives Fellowship from LAPA, Will Spend Next Year at Princeton University

May 12, 2016

Melynda J. Price, the Robert E. Harding, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law, has received a fellowship from Woodrow Wilson School’s Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) and will spend the 2016-17 academic year at Princeton University. Prof. Price was one of six fellows selected in a competitive process from a large interdisciplinary and international applicant pool.

Prof. Price’s research focuses on race and citizenship, the politics of punishment and the role of law in the politics of race and ethnicity in the United States and at its borders. She is the author of “At the Cross: Race, Religion and Citizenship in the Politics of the Death Penalty” (2015). She has published in the Iowa Law Review, the Michigan Journal of Race and Law and other legal journals, as well as The New York Times, Tidal Basin Review and Pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture. She also blogs at ivorytowerinterloper.blogspot.com. She is the director of the African American and Africana Studies program in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences. Price has a doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan, a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law and studied physics as an undergraduate at Prairie View A&M University.

“Prof. Price has been a leader among law academicians whose scholarship engages the university and broader community,” said David A. Brennen, Dean at UK College of Law. “This fellowship represents a milestone recognition of her engagement on a national level.”

Prof. Price will spend the academic year pursuing a project that analyzes how we understand activism among black mothers of murdered children. She will also participate in law-related seminars, engage with faculty and students pursuing law-related academic inquiries and teach in the curricula of various programs on campus. Each fellow will also give a public seminar on their LAPA-supported research project.

"Prof. Price's fellowship at Princeton is a signature accomplishment in the life of a legal scholar,” said colleague Mary Davis, Stites & Harbison Professor of Law at UK College of Law. “Many, many scholars seek out this fellowship, but very few are selected. It is impossible to overstate the significance of this recognition of her scholarship. Congratulations to Prof. Price for this impressive achievement."