JahAsia Jacobs is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology. Her research unpacks the relationship between moral and financial obligations and race. Her dissertation explores the qualitative valences of the Heirs’ Property Relending Program, attending to the everyday, embodied experiences of Black farmers living on family land (heirs’ property) in Georgia as they negotiate with kin and federal agricultural lending institutions to realize their food and land aspirations. 

Her previous research about the constraining impacts of student debt on college graduates won the Society for Economic Anthropology’s 2020 Harold K. Schneider Prize. JahAsia has worked with the African-American Alliance for Homeownership in Portland, OR, and Downstreet Housing & Community Development in Montpelier, VT. She has also organized with The Debt Collective, a U.S.-based debtor’s union fighting for comprehensive debt abolition. She is currently an editorial assistant for Transforming Anthropology, the flagship journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists.