Biography

Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette is a Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Howard University. Prior to joining Howard, she served as Professor of Africana Studies at Georgia State University, where she also co-directed the Center for the Advancement of Students and Alumni (CASA).

Her research focuses on the intersections of hip hop culture, popular culture, political behavior, African American politics, Black women and politics, political psychology, and public opinion. She is currently completing her second single-authored book, Check the Rhyme: Political Rap Music and Racial Attitudes (New York University Press), and is curating a searchable database of political rap songs, set to debut in 2026.

Dr. Bonnette is the author of Pulse of the People: Rap Music and Black Political Attitudes (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) and co-editor of For the Culture: Hip-Hop and Social Justice (University of Michigan Press, 2022) and Black Popular Culture and Social Justice: Beyond the Culture (Routledge, 2023). Her scholarship has appeared in journals such as Ethnic Studies Review, New Political Science, and Du Bois Review.

Her leadership and scholarship have earned her numerous honors, including the Provost’s Outstanding Tenure-Track Faculty Achievement Award (2023), the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Award (2022), and the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Faculty Diversity Award (2020). She has served as co-principal investigator or director on multiple major grants—including awards from the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and as the project director of the Fulbright-Hays Study Abroad program to Salvador, Bahia, Brazil—collectively totaling more than $2 million. Currently, she is Co-PI of the Mellon Foundation–funded project Intersectionality in the American South.

Beyond her written scholarship, Dr. Bonnette has organized and curated major academic conferences, including Behind the Music: Hip Hop and Social Justice (2017), Beyond the Culture (2020), Beyond the Culture II (2023), and the international conference Hip Hop is 50!: The Golden Anniversary Conference (2023). Her 2019 TEDx talk, The Political Impact of Rap Music, further highlights her ability to bring scholarship to public audiences.

Her expertise has also reached wide audiences through public scholarship. In 2018, her essay Rap Music’s Path from Pariah to Pulitzer was published in The Conversation, receiving more than 22,000 reads. She has been featured in the Bounce Network documentary Protect or Neglect (2021) and ABC News’ Emmy-winning (2024) Rap Trap: Hip-Hop on Trial, now streaming on Hulu. She is also the creator and host of the podcast The Intersection: Where Black Popular Culture Meets Social Justice.

A former Nasir Jones/ W. E. B. Du Bois Hip-Hop Fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Dr. Bonnette has also delivered invited talks internationally, including in Ingelheim and Kaiserslautern, Germany. Her work and commentary have been sought by numerous outlets, including The Washington Post, Vox, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, BBC, CBS 46, ABC News, WABE, Atlanta Magazine, and TheGrio.