Michael W. Yarbrough is Associate Professor of Law & Society at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) and of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. His current research examines how different forms of law shape the ways people understand marriage and other relationships in their everyday lives, with a particular focus on South Africa. This work has received the Law & Society Association Article Prize and other awards. Yarbrough also co-edited the After Marriage Equality series (2018), three volumes that examine how LGBTQIA+ families, activism, and political priorities are changing after same-sex marriage, as well as the Research Handbook on Law, Movements, and Social Change (2023). 

These volumes all include activists and early career scholars alongside more established voices, and Yarbrough prioritizes working to expand the boundaries of recognized knowledge production. At John Jay, he and his colleagues developed the Legal Disruption Project, in which students produce original sociolegal research about their own, mostly working-class communities. He has received multiple awards from John Jay for teaching and service to students. Yarbrough is also a former board member of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ+ Studies, and a current member of the We Are Higher Ed collective and the Stand Together for Higher Ed national leadership team. 

Yarbrough has been an active LSA member for over 20 years, serving as an Early Career Workshop mentor, a member of the Undergraduate Paper Prize committee, and member and chair of the Article Prize Committee. He is also a board member of the Consortium on Undergraduate Law & Justice Programs. A first-generation college student, Yarbrough holds a JD from Yale Law School and a PhD in sociology from Yale.