Her academic research is inspired by a desire to investigate the challenges facing contemporary black Americans and to better understand the multiple, creative ways that African Americans respond to these challenges. She received her BA in English from Wake Forest University, her PhD in political science from Duke University, and she is currently a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Harris-Lacewell appears regularly on MSNBC and is a frequent contributor to The Nation online. Her work has appeared in scholarly journals and edited volumes, and she is the author of the award-winning book Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton, 2004). She is currently at work on a new book called Sister Citizen: A Text For Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Wasn't Enough (forthcoming, Yale University Press).