Dr. Jones is an Associate Professor for Education at Grinnell College where she teaches courses in youth culture, young adult literature and Introduction to Educational Studies. She has focused on doing research that examines Black women’s literacy practices and exploring racialized trauma in school curriculums.  

Before Grinnell she spent six years teaching in Atlanta Public Schools, Dr. Jones transitioned to graduate studies at the University of Georgia with the support of SREB Doctoral Scholars of Color fellowship. She is part of the inaugural cohort of Associated Colleges of the Midwest Mellon Faculty Fellows and was awarded the STAR fellowship through the Literacy Research Association.  

Since 2017, Dr. Jones has been collecting information from classroom stories of racialized trauma that connect to the Black community. She finds sources like news articles or videos detailing what the student’s negative experience was at school. She would upload the incident onto a Facebook page, gathering information of a large trend among the U.S schools. 

This work led to her project, “Mapping Racial Trauma”, which seeks to understand and explore racialized trauma and curriculum violence within schools K-12 across the United States. Schools like private, public, parochial and higher education institutions are reporting racist incidents that include curriculum violence, physical, racially offensive acts, verbal or written racialized comments, threats, or intimidation.  

The Mapping Racial Trauma project visually maps out the incidents using ArcGIS software, so students, parents, educators, and communities can see where and how frequently these incidents occur. This visual approach of the map helps shift racial trauma from isolated experiences to collective, systemic realities that demand accountability and action. The platform serves as both an educational resource and a call to action, advocate for change, recognize trends and push schools and districts to address institutional failures that can compromise student safety and learning. The project has notably aspired to mitigate trauma in public schools, encouraging accountability and showing a visual demand for better training for educators, anti-racist curriculum, and more.