Monica Clarice Bell

Graduate Student in Sociology and Social Policy

Biographical Note

Monica Bell is a doctoral student in Sociology & Social Policy. She is a native of Anderson, South Carolina and a graduate of Furman University, where she was a Truman Scholar; University College Dublin, where she was a Mitchell Scholar; and the Yale Law School. At Yale, Monica was president of Yale Law Women and a senior editor of The Yale Law Journal. Immediately before coming to Harvard, Monica was an Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellow at the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, where she focused on public benefits policy and family law reform.

Monica’s academic passions include social welfare policy, the effects of legal institutions on low-income people's daily lives, social resilience and social mobility, and interactions between each of those topics with race, ethnicity, gender, and geography. Monica hopes to explore both traditional and innovative strategies in qualitative research, employing multiple qualitative methods.

Current research includes a study on the transition to adulthood drawing from interviews conducted among a sample of young adults from the Baltimore site of the Moving to Opportunity program (with Kathryn Edin, Geniece Crawford, and Holly Wood) and an interview-based and ethnographic project that explores urban interventions and orientation toward civic engagement among urban youth using the Boston Debate League as a case study (with Asad L. Asad). She will soon begin collecting data that will explore interactions between legal authorities and long-term TANF recipients in the District of Columbia.

Monica's writings have appeared in the Washington Post, the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Education Week, and other publications. With Yaseen Eldik, she has a law review article forthcoming in the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties. Monica is a first-generation college graduate. In her spare time, she enjoys creating healthier interpretations of Southern foods, practicing yoga, and singing.

04/02/2012

Research Interests

Urban and Rural Sociology; Poverty and Economic Inequality; Law and Society; Social Welfare Policy; Qualitative Methodology; Race, Gender, and Class

Previous Degrees

J.D., Yale Law School

M.Sc., Equality Studies, University College Dublin (distinction)

B.A., Political Science and Sociology, Furman University (magna cum laude)

Miscellaneous Additional Information

Research Assistantships

Kathryn Edin, Michele Lamont

House Tutor Position

Lowell House (beginning in Fall 2012)

Contact

617-496-5794 (FAX)

641 William James Hall
33 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA 02138