LeShae K Henderson

LeShae Henderson is a CFD Postdoctoral Fellow in Research & Teaching in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Providence College. Through the sociologies of race, punishment, inequality, and indigeneity, she asks how the law and social institutions construct racial categories; how people navigate and experience those categories; and how those categories shape socioeconomic and health outcomes. 

Dr. Henderson's current research uses Hawai’i’s prison system as a case study to understand how institutions, and the people in them, make sense of, navigate, and treat  indigeneity. Drawing from interviews, legal documents, and 250 issues of prisoner produced newspapers, she explores how Native Hawaiian cultural practices and identities persist in an institution that is historically meant to “strip away the self.” Another vein of her research examines the relationship between racialized mass incarceration and inequality. In particular, she studies the health of incarcerated people through the lens of community wellbeing. 

Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship, the Reducing Inequality Network, and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. Before beginning her doctoral studies, LeShae worked at the Vera Institute of Justice. She also helped produce the Decarcerated Podcast. LeShae received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University in 2025 and her B.A. in Sociology from Harvard College.