cathy hu

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley. I use qualitative methods to examine sociopolitical struggles over the meanings and practices of criminal justice and racial justice. 

My dissertation examines the county criminal court as a new site of intervention for social movements from across the political spectrum. Through a comparative ethnography of activists in the Bay Area following the George Floyd and Stop Asian Hate protests, I explore: 1) how activists link their visions of criminal justice and racial justice; 2) how they advance these visions through interventions into the court; and 3) how these processes vary across groups with divergent orientations and aims. In this study, I show how the everyday work of local activists contributes to dynamics of reform and retrenchment in the politics of crime, punishment, and race more broadly. 

A paper from this project, entitled "Shifting the Landscape of Power: Interstitial Strategies In Criminal Court Activism" is forthcoming in Law & Social Inquiry.

My research has been supported by the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues - Asian American Research Center, Center for the Study of Law and Society, and Greater Good Science Center.

Prior to graduate school, I was a research analyst at the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center in Washington, DC. I also hold a BA in Sociology from Rice University in Houston, TX.