Anya Degenshein

 

About                                                  

 

Anya Degenshein is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University, where she is also a member of the Society of Fellows, a Graduate Fellow in Legal Studies, and a founding member of the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP) Graduate Student Advisory Committee.  She analyzes narratives and discourse to understand where and how social inequality is created, contested, and institutionalized, with particular interest in the criminal justice system and urban economies.

 

Degenshein is currently completing her dissertation project, which investigates how legal actors interpret preventative policing tactics, case law, and policy in post-9/11 domestic terrorism cases.  Previous empirical projects also include a 13-month ethnography of a Chicago pawnshop and a case study of a clash between state-level prosecutorial lobbyists and victims advocates.

 

Previously a doctoral exchange student at Sciences Po, Paris, in the CERI lab, Degenshein also holds master's degrees from both Northwestern and the University of Chicago.  She completed her bachelor's degree at Cornell University, where she also volunteered as one of the first undergraduate teaching assistants for the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP).  Prior to graduate study, Degenshein worked as an English as a Foreign Language teacher in Santiago, Chile, as well as a Court Advocate in the New York Supreme Court for the Fortune Society's alternative to incarceration programs.