Biography

Louis Graham is an Assistant Professor in the Community Health Education Dept. at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. Using community-based participatory approaches, his scholarship aims to understand psychosocial health determinants among ethnic, gender and sexually marginalized groups – including mental health promotion and HIV prevention among black and Latino gay and bisexual men and transgender women. His approach to CBPR facilitates power sharing whereby community stakeholders are engaged in the entire research process from beginning to end. The most daunting health inequalities exist between groups of differing cultural orientations, whether related to ethnicity, sexuality, or other identity designations. Consequently, his research incorporates cultural studies theories (e.g., critical race theory, queer theory) as frameworks and analytic tools. Though he employs mix-methods, he is most interested in narrative, photo, and other qualitative methods. Louis values transdisciplinary collaboration and social justice approaches to scholarship. As such, he locates his work at the intersections of theory, research, policy, and praxis. He is a co-principal investigator of a four-year, Ford Foundation funded ethnographic research project, “Detroit Youth Passages,” (detroityouthpassages.org) which seeks to examine and positively transform structural conditions that contribute to sexual vulnerabilities. In this role, he is the director of all research, communication, and dissemination activities in partnership with the Ruth Ellis Center and African-American transgender communities in Detroit.