matthew clair

Matthew Clair is Assistant Professor of Sociology and, by courtesy, Law at Stanford University. His scholarship broadly examines how cultural meanings and interactions reflect, reproduce, and challenge various dimensions of social inequality and state violence. His research to date has focused on courts and the legal profession. The former body of work leverages the case of courts to sharpen theoretical understandings of the state, institutional inequality, and envisioning among marginalized groups, whereas the latter body of work leverages the case of the legal profession to explore how workplaces and occupational cultures are shaped by the social crises of the twenty-first century. 

Matt is the author of the award-winning book Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court (Princeton University Press). Interviews about his book, sociology, and teaching and engaging with students can be found at Public Books, the New Books Network, Give Theory a Chance, and the Berkeley Journal of Sociology. Other research has been published in several academic and popular outlets, including Social Forces, Socio-Economic Review, Criminology, Social Service Review, California Law Review, Law and Society Review, Du Bois Review, The Nation, Boston Review, and Public Books. 

His scholarship has received awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, the Law & Society Association, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Pacific Sociological Association, and the Eastern Sociological Society and has been supported by several grants and fellowships, including the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the RDCJN/Arnold Foundation small grants program. In 2022, Matt received the American Society of Criminology's Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award and the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, Stanford University's highest teaching award.

Matt is currently working on three research projects: a longitudinal interview study of prospective law school students; a multi-method study and archive of court systems in the Bay Area called The Court Listening Project; and the evaluation of a "systems navigator" program in the Santa Clara County Office of the Public Defender. 

He received his A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. from Harvard University.