Mary E. Thomas (Ph.D. University of Minnesota, 2002) is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her research primarily focuses on the processes of racial and gender identification of teenage girls in the United States. She explores how subjects learn about and reproduce social differences like gender, race, sexuality, and class, through spatial practice. Dr. Thomas authored a 2011 book from Temple University Press, entitled Multicultural Girlhood: Racism, Sexuality, and the Conflicted Spaces of American Education. Dr. Thomas is also conducting research at the Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility with young women. The project explores peer relationships in detention and utilizes ethnographic methodology.