Elijah Anderson

Elijah Anderson is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University, and one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States. His most recent publication is Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life (2022). His other publications include The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life (2011), an NAACP Image Award honored book; Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999), winner of the Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society; Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (1990), winner of the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best published book in the area of Urban Sociology; and the classic sociological work, A Place on the Corner (1978; 2nd ed., 2003).  

Professor Anderson has served on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and is formerly a vice-president of the American Sociological Association. He has served in an editorial capacity for a wide range of professional journals and special publications, including Qualitative Sociology, Ethnography, The American Journal of Sociology, The American Sociological Review, City & Community, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and The International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. He has also served as a consultant to a variety of government agencies, including the White House, the United States Congress, the National Academy of Science and the National Science Foundation. Additionally, he was a member of the National Research Council’s Panel on the “Understanding and Control of Violent Behavior”.

Professor Anderson is the recipient of the 2017 Merit Award from the Eastern Sociological Society and three prestigious awards from the American Sociological Association, including the 2013 Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award, the 2018 W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, and the 2021 Robert and Helen Lynd Award for Lifetime Achievement. 

Elijah Anderson was awarded the 2021 Stockholm Prize in Criminology, the world’s most prestigious award in the field, for his ethnographic observations and analysis of mechanisms behind violence in socially, economically and ethnically segregated areas that have greatly contributed to our understanding of how different types of social interactions among young people lead to violence. 

During his stay in Strasbourg he will be hosted by Professor Jérôme Beauchez (2019 Fellow) and will give a public lecture - Black People in White Space: Challenges to Civil Society (22/05/23).