Research Interests: Inequality and Social Policy; Civic participation and good government; Crime, deviance, restoration, and punishment; Social stratification; Race and Ethnicity; Gender; Discrimination; Geography; Poverty; Quantitative Methods

Evan MacKay is a JD-PhD student in Sociology and Social Policy at Harvard University. Their prior research has focused on the carceral system, youth justice systems, policing, and social disadvantage. They hope to study community punishments, restrictions, and discrimination that can shape post-incarceration. 

Evan is interested in the social and spatial concentration of the criminal justice system. They have researched trends in incarceration and are interested in the politics of criminal justice and the political branding of criminal justice reform. With a focus on the history of race and racism, they are interested in regional comparisons of the carceral apparatus within the US. 

Evan has studied felony disenfranchisement and its impacts on exclusion from society, civic empowerment, and perpetual punishment. Felony disenfranchisement itself is often determined via direct democracy. Evan studies ballot referenda and how voters weighing in directly on a topic impacts public opinion and changes in public opinion on that topic. Evan’s case studies are raising the minimum wage, LGBTQ marriage equality, and medical and recreational marijuana policy. This can soon expand to reproductive justice and abortion rights which are more frequently going directly on the ballot post-Dobbs. 

They are also interested in economic and social precarity, availability of resources including housing and education, and most broadly building an equitable society amidst climate change and social upheaval.  

Previous Degrees:
AB Sociology, Harvard College; AM Statistics, Harvard Griffin GSAS
MPhil Criminology, University of Cambridge