Monica Bell

AFFILIATED SCHOLAR

Dr. Monica C. Bell is a Professor of Law & Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Bell works at the intersection of law and sociology, using sociological tools to explore a wide variety of legal questions, mostly those focused on race and class inequality. Some subject matters that Bell has focused on include policing, structural and interpersonal violence, safety and security, welfare and public benefits, and housing and residential segregation. Bell's scholarship aims to center the voices and perspectives of people who experience legal exclusion. She uses multiple techniques for analysis, theory construction, and data presentation, with an emphasis on qualitative methodology and inductive theory building.

Bell's scholarship has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Economic Perspectives, NYU Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Law & Society Review, and other journals. She has also published writing in popular outlets such as Politico Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Inquest, the Washington Post, and The Appeal.

Bell has received recognition for her scholarship, teaching, and mentorship, such as the 2019 Yale Law Women Faculty Excellence Award, the 2021 Jane Addams Article Award from the American Sociological Association, the 2021-22 Visiting Scholar Fellowship at the Russell Sage Foundation, and the 2022 Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award from the American Association of Law Schools. In earlier years, she was honored as a Harry S. Truman Scholar and a George Mitchell Scholar, life-changing opportunities of which she remains actively supportive.

Bell, a native of South Carolina's upstate Appalachian region, is a first-generation college graduate and a member of the BGLTQ+/QPOC community. She holds a B.A. from Furman University, an M.Sc. from University College Dublin, a J.D. from Yale, and a Ph.D. in Sociology & Social Policy from Harvard. Between law school and graduate school, Bell clerked for the Hon. Cameron McGowan Currie of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina and served as an Arthur Liman Fellow at the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, where her work focused largely on TANF legislation and child support regulation. Before joining the faculty at Yale, Bell was a Climenko Fellow & Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.