# Christopher Muller Professor of Sociology ![Portrait of Christopher Muller](/sites/g/files/omnuum1481/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/sociology/files/muller_2023.jpg?itok=ETOOt9oV) location\_on William James Hall smartphone [617-496-0824](tel:617-496-0824) email laptop\_windows [Chris Muller's Website](https://scholar.harvard.edu/muller) laptop\_windows [Assistant: Maxine Baker](https://sociology.fas.harvard.edu/people/maxine-baker) laptop\_windows [Faculty Office Hours](https://hu.sharepoint.com/sites/FAS-Sociology/SitePages/Faculty-Office-Hours.aspx) *Research Interests:* Inequality, Incarceration, Historical Sociology, Social Theory **Christopher Muller** is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley before joining the Harvard faculty in 2023. He studies the political economy of incarceration in the United States from Reconstruction to the present, with a particular focus on how agricultural labor markets, migration, and struggles over land and labor have affected incarceration and racial and class inequality in incarceration. He has also written on the causes and effects of environmental inequality and inequality in death from infectious disease. His current work is focused on understanding long-run patterns in the Black and White incarceration rates since slavery, particularly why the Black incarceration rate was lower in the South than in the North for much of the 20th century, why it was lowest in the South’s cotton belt, and why it began to increase in the early 1970s. This work aims to clarify the relationship between incarceration and slavery, peonage, and broader shifts in the agricultural economy in the United States. - ## Countries [United States](/country/united-states) - ## Geographic Areas [North America](/geographic-areas/north-america) - ## Current People [Sociology Faculty](/sociology-faculty) - ## Research Clusters [Crime and Punishment](/research-clusters/crime-punishment) [Health and Population](/research-clusters/health-population) [Inequality](/research-clusters/inequality) [Political and Historical Sociology](/research-clusters/political-historical-sociology) [Race, Ethnicity and Immigration](/research-clusters/race-ethnicity-and-immigration) [Urban Poverty and the City](/research-clusters/urban-poverty-city)