Jamila Michener is an associate professor of government and public policy at Cornell University. Her research focuses on poverty, racism, and public policy in the United States. She is codirector of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, codirector of the Politics of Race, Immigration, Class and Ethnicity (PRICE) research initiative, and board chair of the Cornell Prison Education Program. Her award winning book, Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism and Unequal Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2018) examines how Medicaid—the nation’s public health insurance program for people with low income—affects democratic citizenship. Unpacking how federalism transforms Medicaid beneficiaries’ interpretations of government and structures their participation in politics, Fragmented Democracy assesses American political life from the vantage point(s) of those who are living in or near poverty, (disproportionately) Black or Latino, and reliant on a federated government for vital resources.  

Michener’s research has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the The Institute for Citizens & Scholars. She received her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago and her undergraduate degree from Princeton University. Prior to working at Cornell, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at the University of Michigan.

Jamila Michener served on the 2020 Selection Committee for Just Tech’s Covid-19 Rapid Response Grant Competition.