The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is pleased to announce that Gabriela Kirk of Northwestern University has been awarded the first annual Charles E. Lindblom Memorial Fellowship for her project entitled, “Can Electronic Monitoring Fix Mass Incarceration? Understanding the Role of Electronic Monitoring in Local Policy Reform.”

The Charles E. Lindblom Memorial Fellowship is exclusively open to doctoral candidates at the partner institutions of the SSRC College and University Fund for the Social Sciences. Awarded annually, it supports an interdisciplinary social science project that focuses on anticipatory social research, an approach that directs research toward identifying, contextualizing, and framing emergent social phenomena.

Kirk’s project was selected by a committee composed of Professors Meredith Broussard, New York University; Marion Fourcade, University of California, Berkeley; and David Guston, Arizona State University. During their selection process, the committee noted that Gabriela’s project addresses a topic of critical importance for policymakers and the broader public, and that it will bring a unique political economy approach to understanding the adoption and marketing of electronic monitors as an instrument of both social control and criminal justice system reform.

Gabriela Kirk is a PhD candidate in sociology at Northwestern University. Her research broadly explores the practices and consequences surrounding the use of electronic location monitoring and financial sanctions in the US criminal justice system. Her dissertation also focuses on the role that local county-level decision makers and court actors play in dictating electronic monitoring policies and other policy changes. Gabriela’s work has been published in numerous academic journals including the American Journal of Sociology, the RSF: Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Social Problems, Sociological Perspectives, UCLA Criminal Law Review, Sociological Forum, and Punishment and Society.

Charles E. Lindblom (1917–2018), author of many influential works, including Politics and Markets, was Sterling Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University. He taught at Yale from 1949 to 1987, helping to found the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and serving as its director from 1974 to 1980. The Lindblom Memorial Fellowship is offered to honor his name and legacy and to recognize the deep and lasting impact he had on the scholars with whom he worked. The fellowship is made possible by a generous donation from Dr. T.Y. Shen, an SSRC fellow alumni.