This term I’m a fellow at the Center for Humanities Research at GMU. I’ll be using my time at the Center to work on my new book project — the working title is At Risk: Poverty and Democratic Culture in a Community Boarding School.

I’m presenting the most recent draft of my paper on legal socialization and resistance next week at the WPSA Virtual Community Mini-Conference in Political Theory. Join if you can — Saturday, Sept. 9 at noon (ET).

I’m on leave this fall. Over the next few months I’ll be working on my next project on youth politics and legal socialization. (The current, sure-to-change working title is Governing Children.) I’m pairing ethnographic data I collected in 2013-14 at a boarding school with a ten year follow-up (2023-24). It will be a joy to immerse myself in a new book-length project and, in the spring, to start assembling a manuscript.

Earlier this month I received the first prints of Democracy in Captivity — it’s wonderful to finally hold a physical copy!

I’ll be presenting a revised draft of my article on legal socialization next month at the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities at the University of Toronto School of Law. June 22-23, Toronto, Canada.

I’ve been terrible about posting regular updates over the last few years — I’ll start up again this month.

In the fall, I’ll be joining the faculty of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University as an Assistant Professor. I’m thankful for my time at UVa and thrilled to take this next step at Mason!

Good news. My dissertation has been nominated by the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago for APSA’s Harold D. Lasswell Best Dissertation Award.

This summer I’m teaching a community college class at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women (FCCW) in Troy, VA. I’ll be using Constitutional law to introduce incarcerated students to the basic principles of US government. (For more on the facility see Erin George’s autobiography, A Woman Doing Life.)

As of Friday, I’ve completed all the requirements for a masters degree (M.L.S.) at the University of Chicago Law School. It’s been an intense, wonderful year of studying Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and various topics in Law & Society. This rigorous training has, and will continue to, inform the examination of law in my academic research. I’m proud to have been one of the two members of the inaugural cohort.