Celeste Watkins-Hayes is the Interim Dean and the founding director of the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
[6] In addition to her academic articles and essays, Watkins-Hayes has published pieces in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Chicago Magazine.
Watkins-Hayes's research focuses on urban poverty; social policy; HIV/AIDS; non-profit and government organizations; and race, class, and gender.
Her first book is The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Her second book, Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality, was published by the University of California Press (August 2019).