Barbara Harris Combs

Barbara Harris Combs, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with a concentration in race and urban studies from Georgia State University in 2010. She also holds a Juris Doctorate degree from The Ohio State University and an MA in English from Xavier University (Ohio).
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She brings this interdisciplinary background to her study of society. Her research focuses on the role place (as a geographical, social/cultural, and class construct) has on modern identity formation and human relations, especially race relations. She is the author of From Selma to Montgomery: The Long March to Freedom, a book about the Selma campaign for voting rights.

The book chronicles the marches, placing them in the context of the long Civil Rights Movement, and considers the legacy of the Voting Rights Act, drawing parallels with contemporary issues of enfranchisement. Her current book project, Blackout: The Continuing Assault against Black Bodies, argues there are underexplored cognitive aspects of place, which can prove helpful in understanding the continuing assault against black and brown bodies in US society.

It does so by advancing a theoretical framework--bodies out of place (BOP)—that exposes frameworks used to justify and normalize the contemporary rash of attacks on black and brown bodies and fit them into a continuing historical pattern of anti-blackness.

The book is under contract with the University of Georgia Press. She has published in a variety of academic journals including, Critical Sociology, Sociological Spectrum, American Behavioral Scientist, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and others.