Dr. Alana J. Gunn received her BA from Vassar College and her MPP, AM and PhD from the University of Chicago. Before joining the faculty of the Binghamton University Department of Social Work, Dr. Gunn was a National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded post-doctoral fellow at the National Development and Research Institutes in New York City.

Dr. Gunn has extensive experience working with incarcerated individuals in jails and under correctional community-based supervision, as well as with the agencies charged with supporting the re-entry process. Her program of research focuses on the ways in which multi-level experiences of stigmatization shape the health and well-being of women with histories of incarceration and substance use disorders. She is currently engaged in a number of projects, including a formative research study to develop a critical consciousness-informed intervention targeting women at high risk of HIV exposure. She is also writing a grant to explore the barriers, such as stigma, to black women's use of oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).