Sanna King

Dr. Sanna King is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University. Her scholarly interests are in the areas of juvenile justice, criminology, social justice, race/ethnicity, gender, intersectionality, racialized punishment, post-colonialism, and culture. Her research broadly focuses on intersecting inequalities in youth punishment. Her current research examines the impact of racial injustice and racial apathy on the transition to adulthood. Her previous research examined youth punishment in Hawaiʻi, specifically focusing on the connection between schools and jails.

Dr. King received her PhD and M.A. in Sociology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She also earned her M.A. in American Studies from Columbia University, and her B.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. King’s career, research, and study have been focused on social justice and youth punishment.  In addition to teaching at multiple universities, she also facilitated writing workshops to incarcerated youth at Riker’s Island Correctional Facility in New York City for several years before moving to Hawaiʻi. In Hawaiʻi she continued working with incarcerated and at-risk youth through facilitating writing workshops and therapeutic group-counseling programs using the Girls Circle curriculum at juvenile detention facilities and a high school on Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. Dr. King and her colleagues at Mississippi State University also provide reentry preparation workshops for incarcerated people in Mississippi.

She has also worked as a project analyst for an adolescent reentry program at Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York City, as well as an independent living skills and work readiness training coordinator and case manager for foster youth aging out of the foster care system in San Diego, CA.