Jolen A. Martinez is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. His research examines housing development and restorative justice programs in Chicago’s West Side as dually contested sites of speculative finance capital and racial-religious anticipation among Black residents. His ethnography takes place in a Chicago neighborhood that is layered in both Black religious history and material evidence of the city’s iterative plans for de/re-financialization. His dissertation asks, how do Black residents of Chicago’s West Side contend with the racial-capitalist aftermath of their neighborhood’s prophetic past through their everyday encounters with their neighborhood’s present-day financial assets? 

His research is funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Mays Foundation, the W. Allison Davis Foundation, and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture.

Jolen holds a B.A. in Anthropology and a B.A. in History from Rice University. At Rice, he previously researched homelessness housing services in Houston, Texas, where he examined racialized housing risk assessments and their impact on housing development projects. He also completed his M.A. at the University of Chicago on racial data vectorization and affect.