Joe Soss is the inaugural Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service at the University of Minnesota, where he holds faculty positions in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of Sociology. His research and teaching explore the interplay of democratic politics, societal inequalities, and public policy. He is particularly interested in the political sources and consequences of policies that govern social marginality and shape life conditions for socially marginal groups. His coauthored book, "Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race" (2011), was selected for the 2012 Michael Harrington Award (APSA, New Political Science) and the 2012 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award (ASA, Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities), the 2012 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award (American Library Association), and the 2015 Herbert Simon Award (APSA, Section on Public Administration). In 2010, he received the campus-wide Outstanding Faculty Award from the University of Minnesota's Council of Graduate Students (COGS). In 2013-14, he served as Dale T. Mortensen Senior Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. In 2016, Professor Soss was honored with the University's campus-wide award for outstanding contributions to graduate education, named a Distinguished University Teaching Professor, and inducted into the UMN Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Outside his academic work, Soss is an active musician and recently released an album, The Sound of Sweet Ruin.
Professor Soss will be joined by Professor Chloe Thurston.
Professor Thurston's research is on American political development, political economy, and public policy, with a particular interest in how politics and public policy shape market inequalities along the lines of race and gender. She is the author of "At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination and the American State" (Cambridge University Press, 2018), her research has been published in Studies in American Political Development; Politics, Groups, and Identities; and the Journal of Public Policy, and commentaries have appeared in The Daily Beast, Ms., and The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), among others.
Thurston is currently working on two projects related to the politics of credit, debt, and asset inequality in the U.S. The first of these (joint with Emily Zackin) examines the rise and fall of a protective debt relief regime in the United States. The second examines the political economy asset and wealth inequality following key civil rights reforms in the 1960s and 1970s.
Thurston received her B.A. in economics and political science from Johns Hopkins University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2019-2020, she was a member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Originally published at rooneycenter.nd.edu.