Gillian Slee is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton University. Her work focuses on understanding and ameliorating inequality in American state processes. Her research to date has focused on systems with far-reaching consequences: the public defender system, child protective services, and the parole system. With each of her projects, Gillian aims to humanize key state processes and, in so doing, to demonstrate how institutions’ relational dynamics shape inequality. Her research interests include poverty, justice, institutions, work and organizations, theory, and policy. She uses a range of methods—ethnography, in-depth interviews, and statistics—and has published her work in Politics & Society, Social Service Review, and Theory and Society.

Gillian will join the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University as the Gerhard Casper Fellow in Rule of Law in September 2024. Gillian will complete her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton (July 2024), where her research has been recognized with Centennial, Charlotte Elizabeth Procter, and Marion J. Levy, Jr. fellowships. At Princeton, she is an affiliate of the Eviction Lab. Gillian graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Social Studies and minor in Psychology. She earned her M.Phil. in Criminology at the University of Cambridge, where she was a Herchel Smith Harvard Scholar.