Rashad Shabazz's academic expertise brings together human geography, Black cultural studies, gender studies, and critical prison studies. His research explores how race, sexuality and gender are informed by geography. His book, "Spatializing Blackness," (University of Illinois Press, 2015) examines how carceral power within the geographies of Black Chicagoans shaped urban planning, housing policy, policing practices, gang formation, high incarceration rates, masculinity and health.

Shabazz is an associate professor in the School of Social Transformation. 

Professor Shabazz's scholarship also includes race relations and social justice movements. He is currently working on two projects: the first examines how Black people use public spaces to negotiate and perform race, gender and sexual identity as well as to express political or cultural  identity. The second project uncovers the role Black musicians in Minneapolis played in giving rise to "the Minneapolis sound."