Thomas is R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology and the Center for Experimental Ethnography Director at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a Research Associate with the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre at the University of Johannesburg. Her recent book, ‘Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair’, was awarded the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award from the Caribbean Studies Association in 2021, the Senior Book Prize from the American Ethnological Society in 2020, and was also the runner-up for the Gregory Bateson Prize in the same year. She is also the author of ‘Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica’ (2011) and ‘Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and The Politics of Culture in Jamaica’ (2004), and is co-editor of the volume ‘Globalization and Race’ (2006).