Karin L. Stanford is a Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at California State University, Northridge.  She specializes in African American Politics and Social Movements. She researches and conducts oral histories of Civil Rights and Black Power activism in Los Angeles.

As a fellow, Stanford will write a political biography of Jonathan P. Jackson, the seventeen-year-old activist brother to Soledad Brother George Jackson and martyr for social justice and prison transformation. Centered in African American politics and Black Power studies, this biography explores questions raised by 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson's raid at the Marin County Courthouse in August 1970 and reframes generally accepted scholarship surrounding youth activism and accountability.