Bryant CV

Angela Bryant is an Associate Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University-Newark and co-founder of the Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP). Her activist research focuses on theoretical and substantive questions in criminology concerning: the organizational contexts of juvenile and criminal courts, racial/ethnic, gender, and class disparities in case processing decisions, and the implementation and consequences of juvenile/criminal justice policies. In addition to court research, she has obtained internal and external grant awards for projects that focus on the implementation and consequences of education policies in prisons, specifically Inside-Out courses. Providing access to higher education inside and outside of prisons is an evidence-based decarceration strategy to addressing the U.S. incarceration binge.  Dr. Bryant was instrumental in her role at statewide coordinator from 2010-2020 in growing Inside-Out classes in Ohio to include 16 faculty from 10 different colleges offering 20 college classes annually in 11 prisons.  Her inside-out work has been recognized by numerous internal and external grants and awards. Dr. Bryant’s abolitionist agenda seeks to build higher education courses behind the walls and to decrease barriers to access and success in college for the 70 million justice involved people in the U.S.  Building on the success of Inside-Out driven research projects, a primary component of her current research focuses on utilizing Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods to partner with Inside-Out alumni as researchers in order to conduct innovative research that can have a direct impact on the administration of prison programs and reentry initiatives in Ohio.