Bryan L. Sykes is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Sociology at Cornell University. He is a Research Affiliate at the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an External Affiliate at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. He is a Senior Associate Editor for Science Advances (the open access version of Science magazine), and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network and Racial Democracy, Crime and Justice Network at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Sykes received a joint Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California, Berkeley and completed post-doctoral research at the University of Washington. His research focuses on demography and criminology, with particular interests in fertility, mortality, population health, mass incarceration, social inequality, and research methodology. Professor Sykes’ work on the collateral consequences of mass incarceration has been published in leading social science and medical journals and law reviews. His estimates of racial disparities in incarceration were featured in the National Research Council’s (2014) landmark report, “The Growth of Incarceration in the United States,” and he served as a co-editor of a double issue on monetary sanctions in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. One of his current research projects “Shadow Costs: The Effect of Economic and Informational Inequality on Court-Order Compliance,” is funded by the Haynes Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Law & Science and Science of Broadening Participation programs of the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Justice’s W.E.B. DuBois Program of Research on Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Justice System. He other current projects explore the limits of mixed-methods studies in social science research, the effects of mass incarceration on measures of social inequality and demographic processes among subpopulations with the highest risk of criminal justice contact in America, and the ways in which national, regional, and global patterns of mortality, morbidity, and injuries have changed over time.

Dr. Sykes has previously served the Law & Society Association in multiple capacities: as a Planning Committee Member of the Graduate Student Workshop/Early Career Workshop; a Program Co-Chair of the Graduate Student Workshop/Early Career Workshop Planning Committee; Class Representative on the Executive Committee; a member of the Board of Trustees; a member of the (ad hoc) Nominations Committee; and a member of the Budget and Finance Committee.