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 to represent Massachusetts as a Harry S. Truman Scholar.
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. Her current research investigates how finance capitalism and digital labor in the post-COVID era contribute to spatial inequality, gentrification, and culture loss.
