Tracy Perkins is a researcher, writer, photographer and teacher at Arizona State University, where she is an Associate Professor in the School for Social Transformation. Her work is inspired by social movements for justice of the past and present, especially those led by people of color, Indigenous people and the poor. Much of her work documents environmental justice and anti-nuclear activism in California and beyond. Other areas include urban redevelopment in Washington D.C., the politics of public image use, knowledge politics of Wikipedia, and environmental history. Her work is multimodal, taking the form of a book, essays, academic journal articles, photo exhibits, digital humanities projects, oral histories, and social movement archiving.

Tracy has a B.A. in Development Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, a M.S. in Community Development from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to her academic career, she worked in agriculture and the non-profit sector in the San Francisco Bay Area. She served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University (2015-2020).