Dr. Anya Degenshein

Dr. Anya DegensheinMarquette University

Lalumiere Hall, 424

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-3443anya.degenshein@marquette.eduPersonal Website

Curriculum Vitae

Assistant Professor

Social and Cultural Sciences

A cultural sociologist by training, Dr. Degenshein (Ph.D. 2019, Northwestern) examines the scope and consequences of the contemporary U.S. criminal justice system, with a particular interest in its relationship to social inequality. Her award-winning research has appeared in Information, Communication & Society, Theoretical Criminology, Punishment & Society, Contexts, and Theory & Society. 

Dr. Degenshein’s current book project, tentatively titled Speculative Justice: Adjudicating the Future in Counterterrorism Stings, investigates the adjudication of future wrongdoing in the courts through the rhetorical tactics that uphold, and challenge, it. The book is the first systematic examination of how the courts engage in future governance, producing punishment outcomes from counterfactual storytelling about what would have been but never was. Past research projects include an ethnography of a Chicago pawnshop as well as a study of Illinois prosecutorial lobbying that uses both FOIA-requested audio files of legislative hearings and in-depth interviews.

Dr. Degenshein is a member of Northwestern University's Society of Fellows and an inaugural instructor in Marquette’s Education Preparedness Program (EPP). She is also affiliated faculty in both the Master's of Science in Criminal Justice Data Analytics and the Race, Ethnicity, and Indigenous Studies (REIS) programs at Marquette. Previously, she worked as an English as a Foreign Language teacher in Santiago, Chile, as well as a Court Advocate in the Manhattan felony courts for the Fortune Society's alternative to incarceration programs. 

Courses Taught

CRLS 2001 Introduction to Law Studies

CRLS 2540 Surveillance, Law and Society (a campus-based, blended EPP course)

CRLS 4000/5000 Criminological Theory

CRLS 4400 Criminal Law and Procedure 

Research Interests

Sociolegal Studies and Punishment; Surveillance and Prediction; Knowledge and STS; Discourse and Narrative; Racial and Economic Inequalities; Critical Theory

Professional Experience

Court Advocate in the Manhattan Felony Courts for the Fortune Society’s alternative to incarceration program (2009-2011)

Publications

• 2024  Degenshein, Anya. “Finding the Criminal Within: The Use and Meaning of Digital Data at Trial,” Information, Communication & Society. Online first:                       https://doi.org/ao.1080/1369118X.2024.2352627
• 2024  Degenshein, Anya. “The Conceptual Limits of Risk Governance in                          Terrorism Prevention: Toward a Theory of Threat Thinking,” Theoretical Criminology. Online first: https://doi.org/10.1177/13624806231225664                                              
• 2023  Degenshein, Anya. "Ruptured alliances: Prosecutorial lobbying, victims’                       interests and punishment policy in Illinois." Punishment & Society, 25(2): 407-429
• 2020  Degenshein, Anya. “The Object Economy: ‘Alternative’ Banking in Chicago,”           Contexts (19)1: 18-23
• 2017  Degenshein, Anya. 2017. “Strategies of Valuation: Repertoires of Worth at                the Financial Margins,” Theory & Society 46(5): 387-409
• • • ASA Sociology of Culture Graduate Student Paper Award, 2018
    • Sociology Open Access Recognition award, SocArXiv, 2018
    • Winch Prize for Best Paper Published or Presented, Northwestern Sociology, 2018