Gladys Mitchell-Walthour is an Associate Professor of Public Policy & Political Economy in the Department of African & African Diaspora Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a political scientist specializing in Afro-Brazilian political behavior, black racial identity, discrimination, affirmative action and Bolsa Familia. She is currently the president of the Brazil Studies Association. She published the book “The Politics of Blackness: Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2018). She has published in numerous peer reviewed journals including Latin American Politics & Society, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and the National Political Science Review. She was a Lemann Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University in 2014. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan -Ann Arbor, and a BA from Duke University.