Jonah Walters
Institute for Society and Genetics
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow
- jonahwalters@ucla.edu
- Office
- Life Science Building 3365
Dr. Walters will depart ISG at the end of the 2025-2026 academic year to pursue opportunities elsewhere, including as a short-term research fellow at the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. After June 30, 2026, he can be reached at his personal email address: jonahisaac@gmail.com.
Education
PhD, Geography
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Bio
Jonah Walters is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow supported by the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics and the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African-American Studies. He is a member of the Lab for BioCritical Studies, directed by ISG professor Terence Keel. He is at work on a book about “less-than-lethal” weapons, especially pepper spray and Tasers, and the history of policing.
His research has appeared in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, the Engaged Scholar Journal, the NACLA Report on the Americas, and elsewhere. His public writing has appeared in various publications, including the Guardian, Longreads, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the co-editor of The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger (Verso 2023).
He received his PhD from the Rutgers University Department of Geography in 2021. His dissertation, The Popular Economy and its Protagonists: Community, Cooperation, and Development in Nicaragua, linked conjunctural class analysis with science and technology studies to advocate a new framework for analyzing working-class politics in the aftermath of frustrated neoliberal transition.