The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is pleased to welcome the 2024-25 Visiting Scholars cohort to the ABF research community. This year’s scholars are Aaron Z. Pitluck and Michelle Brown.
The ABF invites national and international scholars to take advantage of our diverse sociolegal community and research facilities through its Visiting Scholars program. The ABF chooses scholars whose research coincides with the organization’s research agenda of innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law and society. Visiting Scholars participate in the intellectual life of the ABF by attending weekly seminars with leading scholars, collaborating with ABF faculty, and participating in workshops and discussions with the ABF Fellows.
“The strength of the ABF’s intellectual community is in large part due to the high caliber of its Visiting Scholars,” said ABF Executive Director Mark Suchman. “We are privileged to host these extraordinary scholars this year, and we warmly welcome them to our community.”
Meet the 2023-24 Visiting Scholars Cohort:
- Aaron Z. Pitluck (he/him) is a Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association. Drawing on economic sociology, anthropology, and cultural analysis, his research interests center on financial actors, organizations, markets, and institutions, particularly in the Global South. While at the ABF, he is writing an interdisciplinary book describing how investment bankers, Shariah scholars, and the state are co-producing Islamic banking and finance in Malaysia. By investigating this case study, the book seeks to distinguish empowering from exploitative finance and to contribute to understanding how to alter the trajectory of finance towards the former.
- Michelle Brown (she/her) is a Professor and Associate Head of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, where she also cofounded the Appalachian Justice Research Center. During her time at the ABF, Brown will work on her book project, Streaming Justice: Movements, Media, and the Problem of Crime. In the book, she argues that the problem of crime and the crisis of the criminal legal system are inseparable from a media universe with intensified and conflicting claims for narrative control.
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About the American Bar Foundation
The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is the world’s leading research institute for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. The ABF seeks to expand knowledge and advance justice through innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law, legal processes, and legal institutions. To further this mission the ABF will produce timely, cutting-edge research of the highest quality to inform and guide the legal profession, the academy, and society in the United States and internationally. The ABF’s primary funding is provided by the American Bar Endowment and the Fellows of The American Bar Foundation.