Debra Thompson
Debra Thompson is an associate professor of political science and Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University. She studies the historical and contemporary relationships among race, the state, and inequality in Canada and other democracies. Thompson is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. Her books include The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census and The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging. She hosts the podcast In/Equality and contributes columns to The Globe and Mail. Thompson lives in Montreal.
Writers & Books
Award History
2022 - Finalist
Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction
forThe Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging
Jury Citation
“Through direct and evocative prose, Debra Thompson skillfully leads the reader into a rare perspective on the world of Canadian and American Black life. Navigating the space between her father’s ancestors who fled enslavement and her own life as one of very few Black women working in the field of political science, Thompson breaks ground in both countries. Engagingly personal and crisply political, The Long Road Home illuminates how the experience of Blackness cannot be explained by drawing a line at the 49th parallel.”Juror History
Works Recognized by WT