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Traveler.

Storyteller.

Sociologist.


My name is Demetrius Miles Murphy. I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California. I earned my B.B.A. in Management Consulting and Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame and my M.A. in Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University. My research interests lie in the areas of race and ethnicity, urban sociology, culture, mental health, and economic sociology. I focus on flourishing, the Black class structure, resistance strategies, and Black placemaking. I have two ongoing lines of research. One research line investigates resistance and challenges to anti-Blackness in Brazil. The latest manuscript from this line of research explores police killings and racial ideologies in Brazil using social media data. My primary line of research explores individual and collective well-being in Black communities in Los Angeles County. My dissertation, Flourishing in LA: Making Place in an Anti-Black Metropolis, examines where Black people feel good and how those places promote their psychological and social well-being.