Rebecca Leigh Sandefur is an American sociologist. She is Professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University and a faculty fellow of the

American Bar Foundation The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is an independent, nonprofit national research institute established in 1952 and located in Chicago. Its mission is to expand knowledge and advance justice by supporting innovative, interdisciplinary and rigoro ...

(ABF). At the ABF, she founded the access to justice research initiative in 2010. Sandefur also won a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2018 for "promoting a new, evidence-based approach to increasing access to civil justice for low-income communities".

Contributions

Sandefur's research focuses on how low-income Americans consume legal services. The ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'' described her research on alternative approaches to settling civil justice disputes over housing, employment, and family issues as the kind of scholarship that can sometimes "pass largely unnoticed by the broader culture". Sandefur is a faculty fellow of the

, where she leads a research program on access to justice and contributes to research following the career trajectories of people after they earn their

Juris Doctor The Juris Doctor (J.D. or JD), also known as Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D., JD, D.Jur., or DJur), is a graduate-entry professional degree in law and one of several Doctor of Law degrees. The J.D. is the standard degree obtained to practice l ...

degrees. Sandefur is also known for her theoretical work on social capital, including her most-cited publication, the 2000 book chapter "A Paradigm for Social Capital" co-written with Edward Laumann, in which she argues that social capital should be understood in terms of benefits that realize people's goals, rather than only as resources to which people have access.

Education and career

Sandefur earned her B.A. from the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

. In 2001 she earned her Ph.D. from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

with a dissertation on "the social organization of legal careers". She worked for 9 years as faculty in the

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

sociology department, then became an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Law at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...

, and a fellow at th
American Bar Foundation
She joined the faculty of Arizona State University in 2019.

Personal life

Sandefur is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation. She is married to Monica McDermott.

Works

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sandefur, Rebecca Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century Native Americans American sociologists American women sociologists Chickasaw people MacArthur Fellows Native American social scientists Native American women academics American women academics University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni University of Chicago alumni Stanford University faculty University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty 21st-century Native American women Native American women scientists