Susan S. Silbey

Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology

She has written about the social organization of law in diverse institutional and informal settings including attorney general's offices, courts, schools, private homes, businesses and scientific laboratories; she has also studied alternative forms of dispute resolution including negotiation and mediation. She edited Studies in Law, Politics and Society (1990-1997) and the Law & Society Review (1998-2000). In 1998, she and Patricia Ewick published The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life describing the ways in which Americans imagine, use, and construct the rule of law; 2003 In Litigation: Do the 'Haves' Still Come Out Ahead? (edited with Herbert Kritzer), and 2008, a two volume collection, Law and Science I: Epistemological, Evidentiary, and Relational Engagements and Law and Science II: Regulation of Property, Practices, and Products.

Her current research looks at the roles and conceptions of law in scientific laboratories, comparing the place of law in expert communities and popular culture. She is supervising research on the development of new safety regimes in research labs, and the effects of laboratory organization on gender hierarchies in science. In addition, she is conducting a longitudinal study of engineering education, following a cohort of students through four different engineering schools and beyond into the workplace.

Professor Silbey is Past President of the Law & Society Association, and a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. In 2006, she was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa, Ecole Normale Superieure Cachan, France, and in 2008, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

Please feel free to translate this site.