About
Benjamin Bolawa is a Rackham Merit Fellow and Doctoral Student in Sociology. With a background in criminal investigations and policy, and a pursuit of understanding and working in underserved urban contexts, his research interests center on criminal/civil law, policing, race, and community sociology.
Currently, he is pursuing two lines of inquiry. First, he is pursuing analyses of how disadvantaged communities mobilize and seek sociolegal change in the face of state repression. Here, he uses the case of civil lawsuits over police killings to investigate how grieving families may leverage extra-judicial factors to seek redress in filed cases. Additionally, he is interested in furthering our understanding of how community-oriented approaches to criminal policy affect crime rates, understandings of disorder, and community-state institutional interactions, specifically through investigating the cases of volunteer policing and local NGO work.
As a mixed-methods and community-oriented scholar, Benjamin is dedicated to the theoretical and practical applications of developed academic work. Those with questions or interests in collaboration are invited to reach out at Bolawa@umich.edu.
