Amber Powell
Amber is a Sociology PhD Candidate at the University of Minnesota and an American Bar Fellow National Science Foundation Law & Inequality Fellow and Ruth Peterson Fellow. Her research and teaching commitments include the sociology of law, crime, punishment, race, and gender-based violence. She is also a former sexual assault victim advocate (Milwaukee) court-watcher (Minneapolis). Her work has been featured in Gender & Society, with forthcoming publications in Law & Society Review, and the American Journal of Sociology.
Amber's dissertation explores how formerly incarcerated survivors, sexual assault advocates, social workers, attorneys, PREA personnel and anti-prison rape advocates make sense of sexual victimization within youth confinement facilities.
Her prior research (with Heather Hlavka and Sameena Mulla) draws on ethnographic observations to examine how legal actors construct narratives of credibility in child sexual assault jury trials across systems of race, gender, age, and sexuality. She has also worked with Michelle Phelps and Christopher Robertson, exploring how North Minneapolis residents, activists, and law enforcement officials understand policing, police reform, transformation, and abolition.
Educational Background
- BS: Criminology & Law Studies, Marquette University , Milwaukee, 2015 -
- M.A.: Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minnesota, 2018 -
Specialties
- Black Feminist Theory
- Violence & Victimization
- Critical Race Feminist Theory
- Law, Crime & Punishment
- Transformative justice and community accountability