Dr. Jaimee A. Swift is an Assistant Professor of Black Politics in the Department of Political Science at James Madison University. Swift’s research centers on historical, contemporary, and iterative understandings of radical Black feminist struggles, resistance, solidarities, movements, and memories as modalities of marronage and abscondence in the Americas, specifically in Brazil and in the United States. Her teaching interests include Black political thought and behavior, with an emphasis on Black feminist political theory, resistance, and movement building; Black women's political memories and political productions; and comparative and global racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ politics. Her research can be found in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics, Alternatus, Social Sciences, and more. 

Swift is the co-editor of We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities (Haymarket Books, 2025). Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers—including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, the Organization of Women of African and Asian Descent, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today—We Are Each Other’s Liberation envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists.

Swift is the co-author of the forthcoming biography of Black feminist icon, Barbara Smith, who is a founding member of the Combahee River Collective; co-author of the Combahee River Collective Statement (1977); co-founder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first press run by and for women of color in North America; and an architect of Black Women’s Studies in the United States. Swift is also the lead editor of the forthcoming anthology, A Furious Flower Blooms: Honoring the Intellectual and Political Leadership of Dr. Joanne V. Gabbin. Dr. Gabbin is the founder of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective, which included writers and poets such as the late and great Nikki Giovanni and is founder of the Furious Flower Poetry Center, the first center for Black poetry in the United States.

She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Howard University, with specializations in Black Politics, International Relations, and Comparative Politics.  She holds a B.A. in Communications from Temple University and a M.A. degree in Political Science from Howard University. Prior to joining the JMU community, she was the inaugural Oxford College of Emory University's Office of the Provost Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, where she taught the college's first-ever Global Black Feminist Politics course.