Using a historical comparative analysis of government workers’ movements in Michigan and Ohio, two Midwestern states that once maintained divergent collective bargaining laws for public employees, Joseph’s research traces how insurgent unions in both cases drew upon a diverse set of resources and adapted their forms of mobilization to successfully organize across disparate institutional contexts.

Joseph has published research in Social Service Review, Social Science Research, and the Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy, and he has taught at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. His dissertation research has received support from the Labor Research and Action Network and the Walter P. Reuther Library. Joseph received his B.A. at Portland State University and an M.A. from the Central European University.

Her research interests include medical sociology, inequalities, critical criminology, and visual methodology. She earned her B.A. in Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. While at UCLA, Katherine conducted research as a McNair research fellow on gang-affiliated mothers’ resistance through education. She received her master’s degree in Sociology where she examined the ways gang-affiliated women experience institutional violence and developed a conceptual model on life course criminalization. She continues this line of work in her dissertation by examining the experiences of Latina mothers with the carceral system, specifically the Child Welfare system and mental health.

Katherine’s research has been published in multiple journals and book chapters and her work has been included in policymaking toolkits at the United Nations.

His dissertation, Debtors’ Rights in the Age of Mass Securitization examines mortgage foreclosure as a nexus linking macro-level financialization to forced residential mobility among homeowners. This work traces how mortgage securitization transformed foreclosure into an actively managed profit center, making borrowers’ rights costs that industry players worked to reduce.  This work has been supported by the NSF Law and Science Dissertation Grant.

Walker received his J.D. in 2022 from University of Wisconsin. He received an M.A. from Columbia University, and a B.A. from New College. He also serves as Director of Policy for ProGov21.org, a free digital library of model laws and policies for progressive local governance.

Her dissertation examines how Black and Afro-descendent domestic workers have been central to the most progressive elements of the labor movement in the U.S. and how the gendered antiblack violence of slavery’s afterlife shapes their work experiences and fight for survival. Through semi-structured interviews, Black feminist grounded ethnography, media analysis, and oral histories of Black women domestic workers’ political organizing practices and work experiences in Boston, New York City, and D.C., this research investigates how Black and African descendent domestic workers and domestic workers organizations infuse radical care work into community building efforts to mobilize support at the grassroots and federal levels for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and other struggles for workers’ protections and dignity. This research seeks to understand how Black women’s intersectional organizing around care work strengthens Black radicalism within the mainstream labor movement and re-envisions critical paths toward Black emancipation.

In connection with this research, she is currently an intern with the Massachusetts Coalition of Domestic Workers and a volunteer with Matahari Women Workers’ Center, and was a research analyst at Social Action for Health in East London.

Venus holds an M.A. in Medicine, Health, and Society from Vanderbilt University and a B.A. in political science, African American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from the  University of California, Irvine. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Mellon World Studies Interdisciplinary Project, the Labor Action and Research Network, the Nichols Humanitarian Fund, the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst, the Graduate School at UMass Amherst, the Center for Global Work and Employment at Rutgers, and the Center for Employment Equity at UMass Amherst, to name a few. Her work has been published in Sociology Spectrum.

Caitlin uses qualitative methods to investigate how the criminal legal system exacerbates and legitimizes racial and class inequalities, focusing specifically on how legal professionals and impacted community members experience and resist mass criminalization in their daily lives.

Their dissertation examines the role of public defenders in criminal justice reform and transformation, using a multi-method case study of Gideon’s Promise, an Atlanta-based public defense organization that trains defenders to resist mass incarceration. The results lay critical groundwork for research on public defense and penal change, unmasking both the organizational context and individual struggles of progressive criminal defense in the U.S. South.

Caitlin also works with Minnesota organizations that seek to dismantle mass criminalization and support people with criminal records including All Square, Minnesota Justice Research Center, and Children of Incarcerated Caregivers.

Caitlin has a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Arkansas and an M.A. from the University of Minnesota.

Her dissertation examines the history of neonatal intensive care as a proving ground for some of the most significant transformations in the political economy and reproductive politics of the late twentieth-century medical-industrial complex.

Sadie works across the disciplines of history and public health, and has published work on fetal protection laws, the abortion politics of physicians, long-acting injectable HIV treatments, and the experiences of women living with endometriosis. Sadie is a proud organizer and union steward for the Student Workers of Columbia and has worked as a case manager for the New York Abortion Access Fund. She received a B.A. in History from the University of Chicago in 2015. She is also a recipient of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars Women’s Studies Fellowship.

His dissertation is a study of how deindustrialization and neoliberalism transform the traditional mechanisms of organizing race and class politics among working-class Mexican-Americans in Chicago’s former steel-producing neighborhoods. Drawing on extensive ethnography and archival materials, he shows how the changing political economy of the urban periphery, the decline of neighborhood civil society, and political competition between teachers and police shape working-class racial politics and collective action.

Prior to pursuing academic research, Rishi worked in community and labor organizing for more than 12 years. Rishi’s project is also supported by a Russell Sage Foundation Dissertation Research Grant and a Graduate Research Fellowship from the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute.