Julie Ajinkya

Policy Analyst

Expertise: Race and ethnic politics, women's rights, immigration, Muslim communities in the West

Julie Ajinkya is a Policy Analyst for Progress 2050 at American Progress. Her work focuses on race, ethnic, gender, and immigration politics, and she pays particular attention to the changing demographics of multicultural societies such as the United States and Western Europe. She is currently also a visiting professor of racial and ethnic politics at Cornell University’s center in Washington, D.C.

Prior to joining American Progress, she was an instructor and teaching assistant at Cornell University while completing a doctoral program in political science. Her past work has also focused on researching global and local women’s movements and the gendered impacts of International Financial Institution investments in the developing world. She was a New Voices Fellow from 2003 to 2005 at the Institute for Policy Studies, where she coordinated the national outreach for the institute’s Foreign Policy in Focus project.

Julie earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in government from Cornell University, where her doctoral dissertation examined the political behavior of children of Muslim immigrants and their campaigns for gender-justice activism in Europe and North America. She also earned a B.A. in political science from Amherst College.