Jolen Martinez is a PhD Student in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. His research is located among the heavily policed neighborhoods of Greater Lawndale in West Chicago, centering on differing senses and anticipations among data scientists, law enforcement, abolitionist activists, and Muslim communities. He is interested in the ways that different subjects experience prediction, memory, and prophecy as concurrent temporalities of this racialized geography. He asks, how are infrastructures such as gunshot detection sensors, economic/violence risk assessments, and financial speculation devices trained alongside their practitioners as desirable prediction networks in Lawndale? How do organizations of Black and Latino residents in Lawndale train contrasting anticipatory feelings, through community gatherings, Islamic teaching, and abolitionist organizing? What can we learn from the imbrication of these rhythms of expectation and their embodiment? Jolen received his B.A.s in Anthropology and History from Rice University where he researched the practices of predictive homelessness housing services and risk assessments. His work is funded by the Ford Foundation and the Mellon Mays Foundation.
The University of Chicago
