Shay-Akil McLean

Dr. Shay-Akil McLean, Ph.D., is a Queer Trans masculine & genderqueer man (they/he) racialized as Black, on stolen Indigenous land, an educator, organizer, writer, public intellectual, human biologist, geneticist, biological anthropologist & sociologist. Dr. McLean earned their Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) School of Integrative Biology’s Program for Ecology, Evolution, & Conservation Biology (PEEC).

Dr. McLean studies how systems of human practices produce the differential distribution of health, illness, quality of life, and death. He is also the founder of the free political education website decolonizeallthethings.com & the free scientific ethics website decolonizeallthescience.com.

Dr. McLean studies Du Boisian sociology, STS/HASTS, race/ism, human health demography, evolutionary genetics, & theoretical population genetics. They hold degrees in both biological anthropology (BA & MA) & sociology (BA & MA). Dr. McLean uses this training to study bioethics, medical ethics, philosophy of biology, theoretical population genetics, evolutionary theory, human ecology, health inequities, & knowledge production.

Dr. McLean’s Master’s work in biological anthropology looked at the effects of food insecurity, poverty, & racial residential segregation on the dental health of low-income Black people in the 4th poorest city in the United States. It is through this work that Dr. McLean began developing community-based grassroots interventions that focus on changing marginalized’s people’s relationships to knowledge & power. The goal of Dr. McLean’s work is to produce otherwise alternative by creating the conditions required to achieve strategic gains toward organizing communities against the structural violence killing colonized & racialized peoples & the earth.

Shay-Akil McLean is available in partnership with Collective Speakers