Editorial Note:
This blog feature was created by the Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) Media Editor, Stephanie Wilson, in celebration of the second place winner in AKD’s 2025 graduate student paper competition, Jonathan Ellis.
Each year AKD sponsors a graduate student paper competition. Winners are eligible to win cash prizes and travel money to attend the American Sociological Association annual conference. The second place winner received $250 and up to $1,000 in travel expenses to the 2025 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Continue reading to learn more about Jonathan Ellis’s winning paper!
Meet Jonathan Ellis
Jonathan Ellis is currently a PhD student at the University of Louisville’s Department other Sociology. His research focuses on the complex barriers unhoused Black men face across the United States and his paper titled “Contested Spaces: Unhoused Black Men and their Survival within the Urban Landscape” won him a second place prize in the 2025 AKD graduate student paper competition.
To learn more about Jonathan and his research, we reached out for a brief interview. Continue reading below to learn more about Jonathan, his research, and his future goals as a sociologist! You can also connect with Jonathan on Instagram.
Can you briefly summarize your award-winning paper?
Displacement leads to cyclical administrative burdens in which men’s racial and unhoused identities intersect to limit access to needed resources. Race, space and the label of homelessness create barriers for unhoused black men and how policy officials and administrative processes add burdens that make upward mobility challenging.
What motivated you to write on the topic of your paper?
With many social problems, I had a realization that being “seen” in society does not necessarily mean that you are recognized as fully human or deserving. Many individuals are hyper-visible—watched, policed, judged—but still socially invisible. They’re not seen as citizens with rights, but as disruptions to be removed. This can be seen not only with those who are unhoused, but also in relation to the intersecting identities within our society.
If you had to choose one major takeaway to share from your paper, what would that be?
Being unhoused and Black in America is not just a condition of poverty—it is a state of hyper-surveillance, systemic exclusion, and institutional neglect enforced through contested urban spaces and racialized administrative burdens.
How do you see yourself using sociology in your future career after earning your graduate degree?
I hope that earning my PhD will provide me with the opportunity to teach at a large university. Additionally, I want to continue conducting research that generates impactful insights for future policies regarding the unhoused, representing a voice for a population that has historically been silenced.
Lastly, how has being involved in AKD impacted your experience as a graduate student in the social sciences?
AKD has broadened my understanding of sociology significantly. Attending the annual AKD induction ceremony at my university, I witness the profound impact sociologists have within my community. I learn how sociologists, regardless of their specializations, are interconnected in their efforts, continuously asking challenging questions and engaging in meaningful work—whether applied or academic—at local, state, and federal levels.