About
Maya Elsner is a PhD student in Public Policy & Sociology at the University of Michigan. She joined the 2025 cohort after earning her B.A. in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College as a Frances Perkins Scholar. In 2023, Maya was selected to represent Massachusetts as a Harry S. Truman Scholar.
As a Nuevomexicano, many of Maya's research interests relate to place-based culture, land relationships, and the contemporary socioeconomic impacts of colonialism in the American Southwest. Maya studies racial capitalism and the political economy of housing, with particular attention to spatial inequality and wealth stratification in urban, 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.
