Dr. Damion Keith Blake is an assistant professor or politics and policy studies at Elon University. He has served as a consultant with the Ministry of National Security on its violence prevention program; Unite for Change, in his home country of Jamaica. Blake is also a guest columnist with the Gleaner newspaper, in Jamaica, contributing commentary pieces on Caribbean electoral politics, political economy, violence and organized crime. Blake has authored and co-authored five published peer-reviewed journal articles. His teaching areas are: Caribbean Politics, Comparative Politics and Government; National Security and Introduction to International Relations. His research areas are: Organized Crime and urban violence in the Americas; Democracy and Mass participation in the US; Social justice race and education in the US; and Caribbean politics, governance and development.
Dr. Blake was a 2011-2012 Drugs, Security and Democracy (DSD) dissertation fellow. The fellowship was awarded jointly by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the Open Society Foundation (OSF).