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A native of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Dr. Woods is currently Professor of Crime & Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and Special Lecturer in Black Studies at Providence College.  He has also lectured in Africana Studies at Brown University and Rhode Island College.  Prior to arriving in New England, he taught in California at Long Beach State University, Sonoma State University, the University of California, Irvine, and at the San Quentin State Prison in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Dr. Woods has also worked in HIV/AIDS prevention, supportive housing for drug users, and public health policy in New York City; AIDS housing in Seattle; and police accountability in Oakland.  He continues to consult with organizations and business, providing services such as public relations communications, research and policy analysis, and presentations and workshop facilitation in a number of areas.

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Dr. Woods' recently founded Holistic Healthstyle Coaching through which he provides guidance for organizations and for one-on-one clientele in creating lasting changes and optimal life performance.  He combines the best practices of fitness trainers, nutrition consultants, executive coaches, wellness experts, and natural healers to integrate the emotional and the physical and overcome the mind-body duality driving most illness, stress, chronic fatigue and injury, stagnant performance, and unsatisfactory work-life balance.  He applies the latest research advances in physiology, nutrition, and biomedical science to the timeless wisdom of natural healing, consciousness, and the integrative arts.

 

Dr. Woods' books include two co-edited volumes on the Black Studies tradition, On Marronage: Ethical Confrontations with Antiblackness (African World Press, 2015) and Conceptual Aphasia in Black: Displacing Racial Formation (Lexington, 2016).  His monograph Blackhood Against the Police Power: Punishment and Disavowal in the "Post-Racial" Era (Michigan State University Press, 2019) is the first of a three-part series, to be followed by Blackhood At-Large: The Cinema of Social Death and Blackhood on Trial: The State of Black Self-Defense.  His analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic was published in March 2022 by Palgrave Macmillan as Pandemic Police Power, Public Health, and the Abolition Question; and his co-authored study of contemporary black migrations in the Mediterranean basin, African Migrants, European Borders, and the Problem with Humanitarianism is forthcoming from Manchester University Press in the United Kingdom. 

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Dr. Woods publishes research articles in peer reviewed journals across the humanities and social sciences, as well as in law review journals.  His policy briefs, scholarly reviews, and political and cultural commentary appear in a variety of venues and popular media platforms. 

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He is currently working on a collection of short stories tentatively entitled, Stories for a Second Life, vol. 1.

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