Matthew Hughey


Matthew Windust Hughey is an American sociologist known for his work on race and racism. He is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, where he is also an adjunct faculty member in the Africana Studies Institute and the American Studies Program. His work has included studying whiteness, race and media, race and politics, racism and racial assumptions within genetic and genomic science, and racism and racial identity in white and black American fraternities and sororities.
He first came to national attention for his book White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race, originally published in 2012.

Early life

Hughey was born in Los Angeles, California. He was raised in Asheville, North Carolina. He received his elementary and middle education through The Calvert School curriculum of Baltimore, Maryland before attending Asheville High School. After briefly living in Kingston, Jamaica, Hughey went on to pursue an undergrad degree at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. While in college he became a member of the historically black Greek-letter organization, Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. He graduated in 1999 as a sociology major and as class president. Hughey proceeded to earn a Master of Education degree in cultural studies from Ohio University in 2002. He completed his doctorate in sociology at the University of Virginia in 2009. While earning his PhD, Hughey was a research fellow for the Center for the Study of Local Knowledge in the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies and later worked as an instructor in the Department of Sociology, Program of Media Studies, and Program of African American Studies.

Career honors

Hughey is recognized as a sociologist of race and racism drawing from several intellectual traditions, notably cultural and critical theory. He has held invited, honorary, and competitive scholarly positions at several institutions globally: Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation at Nelson Mandela University, the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, and the postgraduate school at University of the Free State. Hughey's research, university teaching, and mentoring has also received numerous commendations:

Books