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, 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, and its legal intervention (i.e. PREA), within youth detention. Her prior research (with Heather Hlavka and Sameena Mulla) draws on ethnographic observations of sexual assault adjudication to examine how attorneys construct narratives of youth credibility in child sexual assault jury trials. 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. Amber will be joining the University of Iowa, Department of Sociology & Criminology in Fall 2022 as an assistant professor.
Educational Background
- BS: Criminology & Law Studies, Marquette University, 2015 -
- M.A.: Sociology, University of Minnesota, 2018 -
Specialties
- Violence & Victimization
- Law, Crime, & Punishment
- Race, Gender, & Sexuality
- Qualitative Research Methods
- Feminist Methodologies