About
Maya Elsner is a second-year PhD student in Public Policy & Sociology at the University of Michigan. She earned her B.A. in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College in 2024 as a Frances Perkins Scholar and Harry S. Truman Scholar.
A Nuevomexicana, many of Maya's research interests relate to place-based culture, land relationships, and the contemporary socioeconomic impacts of colonialism in the American Southwest. She studies racial capitalism and the political economy of housing, with particular attention to spatial inequality and wealth stratification in rural and semi-rural contexts. Engaging traditional and decolonial methods, Maya examines gentrification, segregation, labor markets, and questions of cultural preservation within global capitalism's historical development.
