UMN Sociology

Associate Professor Elizabeth Wrigley-Field Awarded Dean's Medal Congratulations to Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, CLA's 2026 Dean's Medalist!

📣 Congratulations to Associate Professor Elizabeth Wrigley-Field (sociology), who has been named the 2026 College of Liberal Arts Dean's Medalist.

Hidden Empire of Finance: How Wall Street Profits from Our Cities and Fuels Global Inequality

📣 Book Publication!

Associate Professor Michael Goldman authored a recent book titled "Hidden Empire of Finance: How Wall Street Profits from Our Cities and Fuels Global Inequality."

Check it out!

📣 Professor Michelle Phelps has received the 2026 Outstanding Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences for her book, The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America.

Congratulations, Michelle!

The criminalizing of protest and dissent has a long history in America The Trump administration is accusing protesters of ‘domestic terrorism’ but this brazen tactic is as old as the country itself

📣Professor Phelps was quoted in an article regarding the historical and contemporary efforts to criminalize protestors and legal observers in the United States. Framing them as "domestic terrorists" is part of a long-standing American tradition of suppressing movements that challenge the status quo.

Violence aux États-Unis : « La bataille pour la démocratie est loin d’être terminée » À Minneapolis, où deux manifestants ont été tués, la population, « armée » de simples téléphones portables pour filmer et de sifflets pour alerter, continue de protester contre la police de l’immigrat...

📣 Professor Doug Hartmann recently published an op-ed offering a grim assessment of the U.S. social and political climate and the current federal occupation in Minneapolis.

Rash: Winter Olympics arrive as a respite from a volatile new year "With world turmoil upending geopolitics, the streets of Minneapolis and points beyond and between, the Olympics may seem irrelevant or indulgent. They’re neither," columnist John Rash writes.

📣 Professor Hartmann was quoted in a recent Minnesota Star Tribune article discussing the 2026 Winter Olympics as both a sporting event and a respite from global and domestic tensions.

For Minneapolis Police Chief, a Federal Crisis and a Fight for Local Trust Police Chief Brian O’Hara says his department wants to keep ICE tensions from boiling over and rebuild relationships lost in the George Floyd upheaval.

📣 Professor Phelps was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article about the recent murder of Alex Pretti by ICE officials and the rising tension between Minnesota residents and DHS.

The College of Liberal Arts congratulates its Dean's List students.

CLA is #UMNProud of all of our students that earned their spot on the Fall 2025 #UMNCLA Dean’s List! Keep up the amazing academic work.

https://cla.umn.edu/undergraduate-students/events-recognition/cla-deans-list

Siphoning Revenue from the Poor | KPFA At every step of the process in which communities are policed and punished, states, localities and other public entities benefit financially, along with their partners in the private sectors. Scholars...

📣 Professor Page & affiliate professor Soss were recent guests on the Against the Grain podcast, discussing how the poorest people—not just individuals but the communities around them—became a cash cow for the state to extract revenue.

Liberal Arts in Action: Responding to This Historic Moment Join leading scholars, journalists, and community voices for panel discussions exploring how liberal arts expertise shapes our understanding of today’s pressing civic issues.

On a day of reflection, join us for a series of virtual panel discussions. Topics: the evolving role of media in democracy, constitutional rights & public safety, and the impact of community narratives on policy
Fri, Jan 23 | 9:15 - 2:30
Register: z.umn.edu/liberal-arts-action
#DayOfTruthAndFreedom

Roper: ICE tactics threaten to unravel trust with local law enforcement Mysterious federal agents zipping around the Twin Cities and bending the local norms of policing are creating confusion.

📣Professor Phelps was quoted in a recent Minnesota Star Tribune article about rising tension and mistrust between the MPD and Minneapolis residents, as a result of ICE in Minnesota.

Minneapolis Knows How to Resist This State Violence From George Floyd to Renee Good, the city has become all too familiar with killings by law enforcement—and it knows exactly how to respond.

📣 Professor Michelle Phelps published an article in response to recent state violence and how 2020 has prepared Minnesotans for the current Trump DHS crisis.

Xiaowen Han Examines How Careers Shape Our Lives Graduate student Xiaowen Han studies how wages and meaningful work accumulate across careers, shaping long-term health and increasing inequality.

@UMNSociology grad student Xiaowen Han uses long-term data to study how job quality and pay shape career paths and impact lifelong health. The vision is to create meaningful, healthy, and fairly compensated work for everyone.

Ed Cornelius: Thinking Sociologically about the Criminal Justice System Meet Assistant Professor Ed Cornelius. He teaches about his passion, the sociology of law and punishment while researching the legal system of his home country, Brazil.

A Critical Look at Punishment: Lessons from the Classroom

Prof. Cornelius brings his dual training as a lawyer & sociologist into courses like Sociology of Punishment & Criminal Law in American Society. He challenges students to interrogate the assumptions that underpin modern penal institutions.

Laura Garbes Examines Race, Power, and Inclusion in Public Radio Laura Garbes examines how public radio’s history and practices privileged white voices and explores efforts to expand who gets heard on the air.

Laura Garbes examines how public radio’s early decisions shaped whose voices were heard.

In Listeners Like Who? published on @princetonupress.bsky.social, she traces how those structures still shape the media and how journalists of color are working to make the industry more inclusive.

📣 UMN GIVE TO THE MAX DAY!

🗓️ Thursday, November 20th

Donations will be directed towards the CLA Student Emergency Support Fund. Gifts to this fund will help students who are facing unexpected financial crises stay on track to graduate.

#UMNGive #GTMD25 #UMNproud

Early Adult Mortality in a Cross-National Context US mortality has long been considered exceptional. Since the mid-1980s, mortality in the US has been higher than in other wealthy nations, and over the last 15 years, that disadvantage has grown.1,2 M...

Associate Professor Elizabeth Wrigley-Field recently authored an article that was published on JAMA Network Open titled "Early Adult Mortality in a Cross-National Context—Reconsidering American Exceptionalism Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic."

📣Congratulations, Elizabeth!

Professor Emeritus Joachim Savelsberg recently co-authored an article for the Cambridge University Press, titled "Prosecutorial-NGO Complex: new legal opportunity structures and the role of (I)NGOs in universal jurisdiction trials on Syria."

📣Congratulations, Joachim!

📣 Professor Michelle Phelps was a recent guest on the Guns Unpacked podcast, where she discussed her latest book and the real-world impact of police abolition policy.

Check it out!

Opinion | Public media’s ‘elitism’ is a result of funding failures "Ironically, any elitism that Republicans charge public radio with is a result of their own attacks on the system," Laura Garbes writes.

Sociology Assistant Professor Laura Garbes published an opinion article for the Minnesota Star Tribune, titled, "Public media’s ‘elitism’ is a result of funding failures."

📣Congratulations, Laura!

“There Wasn’t A Playbook For This”: Local Congregations and the Crises of 2020 Abstract. Using 18 months of immersive ethnographic fieldwork in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, this paper highlights how religious congregations made se

Professor Penny Edgell and PhD Candidates Daniel Cueto-Villalobos and Laura Gilbertson published a recent article, titled, “There Wasn’t A Playbook For This”: Local Congregations and the Crises of 2020."

📣 Congratulations, Penny, Daniel, and Laura!

Minneapolis crime is down — even if it doesn’t always feel that way Producer Gretchen Brown talked with University of Minnesota Sociology Professor Michelle Phelps to try to make sense of the gap in crime perception versus reality.

Professor Michelle Phelps recently appeared on MPR for an interview about the discrepancy between the amount of crime in Minneapolis & the public's perception of crime.

Check it out!

Making racial demands: tracing the struggle over public safety in Minneapolis Abstract. In May 2020, the world erupted in protest after officers with the Minneapolis Police Department murdered George Floyd. In response, abolitionist

Professor Michelle Phelps and PhD Candidate Daniel Cueto-Villalobos published a recent journal article, titled “Making racial demands: tracing the struggle over public safety in Minneapolis”.

📣 Congratulations, Michelle and Daniel!

📣 Snigdha Kumar: Caroline Rose Student Paper Award Recipient

Congratulations to PhD Candidate Snigdha Kumar, who was recently awarded the Caroline Rose Student Paper Award for the graduate level.

Snigdha will present their paper at the SOM Conference on October 3-4 at Macalester College.

📣 Anya Lindberg: Caroline Rose Student Paper Award Recipient

Congratulations to undergraduate student Anya Lindberg, who was recently awarded the Caroline Rose Student Paper Award for the undergraduate level.

Anya will present her paper at the SOM Conference on October 3-4 at Macalester College.

Joachim Savelsberg—Visiting Scholar - ABF Joachim Savelsberg is a Visiting Scholar at the American Bar Foundation whose research focuses on mass violence, genocide, and other topics.

Prof. Emer. Joachim Savelsberg was appointed a Visiting Scholar at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago. He will be advancing a book project with Jillian LaBranche, titled “Hearing Cries for Accountability: NGO-Prosecutorial Networks & Syrian Regime Crimes.”

Congratulations, Professor Savelsberg!

Sociologists of Minnesota | 2025 Conference A professional association whose mission is to promote and develop an understanding of sociology and sociological practice in the state of Minnesota.

We are excited to announce the upcoming conference of the Sociologists of Minnesota, hosted by Macalester College in St. Paul, on October 3rd and 4th, 2025.

For more information about the conference or its details, please visit the Sociologists of Minnesota | 2025 Conference website.

Listeners Like Who? How public radio has perpetuated racial inequality since its founding—and how journalists of color are challenging white dominance in the workplace and on the public airwaves

2025 book publication!

Assistant Professor Laura Garbes authored a recent book titled "Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry."

Check it out!

📣 Welcome new graduate students to the Department of Sociology! We are excited to connect with you over the next few days.

There’s Something Very Dark Happening to Millennials and Gen Z Adults America is not a good place to be an early adult.

Check out this new article by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field (UMN Sociology), Andrew Stokes, and Jacob Bor highlighting the concerning death rates within the "early adult" population within the United States.