Monica C. Bell is Professor of Law & Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She is also currently the Drew Gilpin Faust Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, where she is writing a book manuscript that crosses the boundaries between social science, policy analysis, and the arts to theorize and elucidate the perspectives of people who are experiencing and resisting legal marginalization.  

Bell’s scholarship has appeared in the Law & Society Review, American Journal of Sociology, Yale Law Journal, Journal of Economic Perspectives, NYU Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and other journals. She has also published writing in popular outlets such as Politico Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Inquest: A Decarceral Brainstorm. Bell is a previous chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on the Sociology of Law, and she has held other leadership positions in the ASA’s Law Section and Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance. She has served on the editorial boards of the Law & Society Review and American Sociological Review. 

Bell has been honored with the Derrick A. Bell Jr. Award from the Association of American Law Schools, a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar fellowship, and scholarship awards from five sections of the American Sociological Association. She is also a two-time recipient of the Yale Law Women+ Faculty Excellence Award, Yale Law School’s teaching prize. Bell, a first-generation college graduate from South Carolina, holds a BA from Furman University, an MSc in Equality Studies from University College Dublin, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in Sociology & Social Policy from Harvard University.