About
Maya Elsner is a first year PhD student in Public Policy & Sociology at the University of Michigan. She joins 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 as a Harry S. Truman Scholar representing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Maya studies the political economy of racial capitalism, with particular attention to how housing and financial systems produce 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. Her current research investigates how finance capitalism and digital labor in the post-COVID era contribute to spatial inequality, gentrification, and culture loss.
