Amber J Powell
Affiliations
Amber Joy is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. She is also a former Sexual Assault Survivor Advocate volunteer in Milwaukee, WI. Her work examines how law, punishment, and violence impacts communities of color, broadly engaging with Critical Legal & Critical Race Feminist Theory. 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. As the 2020-2022 American Bar Foundation Law & Inequality Fellow and Ruth Peterson Fellow, her dissertation explores how formerly incarcerated survivors, sexual assault advocates, social workers, attorneys, and activists interpret sexual victimization in youth confinement. Amber Joy is also a regular contributor to The Society Pages, writing on a range of topics including sexual assault, prisoner reentry, and racial disparities. You can find her work in Gender & Society, The New Handbook of Political Sociology, and The Encyclopedia of Crime, Law Enforcement, Courts, and Corrections.