Department of Sociology

Recent PhDs on the Job Market

Sarah J. Halford
Sarah J. Halford

PhD: August 2024

  • Research/Teaching Interests: social movements; media; culture; mis/disinformation; institutional distrust; ethnographic methods; qualitative data analysis 

  • Courses Taught: Protest, Politics, and Change: Social Movements; Conspiracy Culture; Order and Change in Society

  • Bio: Sarah J. Halford is a PhD Candidate in the Sociology Department. She studies social movements, media, and culture, with special interests in mis/disinformation, institutional distrust, and online activism, and conspiracy movements. Her dissertation research is an ethnographic study on the role of institutional distrust in recruitment to, and sustained participation in, the Anti-5G Movement. She holds an M.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University, an MA  in Individualized Studies from New York University, and a BA in Liberal Arts from the New School University. 

  • Publications: Halford, Sarah J. 2023. "Conspiracy Movements: A Definitional Introduction and Theoretical Exploration of Organized Challenges to Epistemic Authority." The Sociological Quarterly 64(2): 187-204. 

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Samantha Leonard

Samantha Leonard

PhD: August 2023

  • Current Position: Visiting Lecturer of Sociology, Mount Holyoke College
  • Research/Teaching Interests: collective action and social movements, gender, violence, temporality, feminist theory
  • Favorite courses to teach: "Violence and Intimacy" and "Sociology of Families, Kinship, & Sexuality"

  • Personal Website: www.samantha-leonard.com

  • Dissertation Abstract: My dissertation research, “Defining Violences: Fielding Intimate Partner Violence in Argentina and the United States” is a comparative study of the intimate partner violence fields of action in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Boston, Massachusetts. This project involved ethnographic and archival research conducted between 2015-2020, including 13 months of ethnographic research conducted in Argentina and the U.S. between 2019-2020. In this project, I bring a temporal lens to the issue of IPV by extending the concept of slow violence to theorize how the temporality of IPV shapes the practices of service providers in Buenos Aires and Boston. I also develop the concept of temporal regimes to analyze field variances. I argue that between 2015-2020 the field of Boston was oriented towards the future through a temporal regime of prevention that centers discourses of public health, while Buenos Aires was oriented towards the present through a temporal regime of recuperation that centers discourses of embodied citizenship.

  • Selected Publications:

    • Leonard, Samantha. 2019. “What is the Work? And With Whom Are We Working?: Relational Practices within the Intimate Partner Violence Field.” Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 34(4):535-551. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109919868837
    • Leonard, Samantha and Ann Ward. 2022. “Tales from the (Disrupted) Field: Contemplating Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Midst of Pandemic.” Ethnography. https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221145424

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