Faculty Associate
Affiliated with:
Office: HW 1604
Bio:
Michaela Soyer is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Hunter College. Her book “A Dream Denied” — Incarceration, Recidivism and Young Minority Men” has recently been published by the University of California Press. Currently Michaela is engaged in data collection for several collaborative mixed method projects about inmate networks and their significance for reentry and recidivism. Her second book, tentatively titled “Lost Childhoods” is based on in-depth interviews with 30 juveniles adjudicated as adults and their families. Relying on this interview data she seeks to understand the young men’s pathways into crime, the negative turning points they experienced as teenagers as well as the role childhood trauma and extreme deprivation played in their criminal career.
Recent Publications:
- Soyer, Michaela. A Dream Denied: Incarceration, Recidivism and Young Minority Men in America. University of California Press, 2016.
- Soyer, Michaela. “‘We knew our time had come’ – The Dynamics of Threat and Microsocial Ties in Three Polish Ghettos under Nazi Oppression. Mobilization, 2014 (19) 1.
- Soyer, Michaela. “The Imagination of Desistance: A Juxtaposition of the Construction of Incarceration as a Turning Point and the Reality of Recidivism”. British Journal of Criminology. First online October 25, 2013. [doi:10.1093/bjc/azt059]
- Soyer, Michaela. “Off the Corner and into the Kitchen: Entering a Male Dominated Research Setting As a Woman.” Qualitative Research. First published online on May 31, 2013. [doi:10.1177/1468794113488130]
Current Projects:
Professor Soyer is working on several research projects about prisoner reentry and the impact of parental incarceration on children. In addition to this collaborative work she is writing her second book “Lost Childhoods” based on qualitative life-course interviews with juveniles that were adjudicated as adults in Pennsylvania. Together with her co-authors Lynn Chancer and Laura Orrico she is also working on a book about the impact gender has on the way sociologists conduct fieldwork.
Research Areas: Criminology, Inequality, Qualitative Methods, Social Theory
