Ralph began his academic career at the University of Michigan in 2010, where he was a Visiting Faculty member and a Mandela-Rodney-Dubois Postdoctoral fellow at the Center for African and Afro American Studies.
[13] Ralph's work focuses on the way police abuse, mass incarceration and the drug trade have historically normalized disease, disability and the premature death of black urbanites as they are often perceived as being expendable.
The research he does lies at the junction of critical medical and political anthropology, African-American studies and the emerging scholarship on disability and he combined the literature on these to show for black urban residents, violence and injury plays a central role in their day-to-day lives.
In an article, Ralph examines the life and career of a Chicago police detective, Richard Zuley, who tortured criminal suspects in the United States and Guantánamo Bay.
He builds on the scholarship on white supremacy, as he discusses the schema of racism that informs state-sanctioned violence which is often subconsciously used as a rationale for fighting terrorism as it is deeply ingrained in people's minds and cannot be "unthought.
[17] In his article on The Qualia of pain, he considers the relationship between the qualitative experience, enactments of violence and the intense silences that obscure its recognition.
[20] Renegage Dreams emphasizes on the aftermath of the "war-on-drugs" along with mass incarceration, the consequences of heroin trafficking for teenagers that are HIV positive, the danger of gunshot violence and the subsequent injuries sustained by gang-members.
And his explicit discussion of the interconnections of inner-city injury with government, community institutions, as well as how it is related to historical and social processes, is a major contribution."
Ralph adapted the book into an animated short film, also called The Torture Letters[25] which was featured in The New York Times Opinion Documentary series.
According to WIA President Marge Dean The Torture Letters uses the medium of animation in the best way possible by telling a story that is not often heard but is critical for the advancement of humanity.
[27] It was described as a "readable, empathic portrayal of a Hispanic teenager whose promising life was cut short because of failures in the criminal justice system and violence in the streets.