Erykah Benson

Erykah Benson is a second-year doctoral student and Population Studies Center trainee. She explores the politics of Black entrepreneurship within the context of structural racism in the United States. She is a research fellow at the Center for Racial Justice, where she studies topics such as perceptions of racial inequity, reparations, as well as Detroiters' economic well-being and entrepreneurship using data from the Detroit Metro Area Communities Study. She researches the changing nature of work by focusing on the reproduction of inequalities in the platform gig economy. Her work has appeared on multiple platforms, including the Detroit Free Press, Bridge Detroit, and CBS News Detroit. She is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and NCID Anti-Racism Grant Recipient.