Jennifer Garfield-Abrams, PhD

Education

• Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst
• M.A., University of Massachusetts Amherst
• B.A., Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Research/ Fields of Interest

Community and Urban Sociology; Culture; Identity; Politics, Partisanship, and Civil Discourse; Sociological Theory; Ethnography and Qualitative Methods

Biography

Jennifer Garfield-Abrams is an urban sociologist whose research explores the intersections of culture, politics, and identity in changing cities and communities. She joins the Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she completed her Ph.D. in Sociology.

Dr. Garfield-Abrams uses ethnographic, interview, and visual methods to investigate how local organizations and community groups respond to change, construct and challenge social and symbolic boundaries, and negotiate the cultural order amidst conflict. Her current book project examines the impact of political polarization on community life in a small, gentrifying city in New York’s Hudson Valley. Through deep ethnographic fieldwork, she traces how successive waves of urban migration reshape a town’s identity, social order, and political landscape. The project highlights how residents navigate difference, build community, and engage in practices of recognition across ideological divides.

In related work, Dr. Garfield-Abrams investigates how partisanship and polarization manifest in participatory democratic spaces. One ongoing project is an ethnography of polling places, through which she examines how people perform bipartisanship in highly polarized times, how political tensions surface in ostensibly neutral spaces, and how such spaces shape civic life and community relations.

In addition to her research, Dr. Garfield-Abrams is deeply committed to teaching. She has designed and taught a wide range of core and elective sociology courses in diverse classroom settings and was twice named a finalist for the UMass Distinguished Teaching Award in recognition of her excellence in teaching.

Selected Publications

• Garfield-Abrams, Jennifer L., Thomas Corcoran, & Jonathan Wynn. 2023. “The (Culture) War of the Worlds: 'Terraforming' as a Language for Urban Redevelopment.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 48(1): 53-73.
• Garfield-Abrams, Jennifer L. 2023. “The Art of ‘Everyday Resistance:’ Small City Cultural Actors’ Disruption of Extralocal Growth Politics.” Journal of Urban Affairs: 1-18.
• Garfield-Abrams, Jennifer L. 2022. “Mapping the Organizational Field of Social Welfare.” TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology, February. Washington DC: American Sociological Association.
• Corcoran, Thomas, Jennifer Abrams, & Jonathan Wynn. 2019. “Place Exploration: Six Tensions to Better Conceptualize Place as a Social Actor in Urban Ethnography.” Pp. 91-111 in Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 16, Urban Ethnography: Legacies and Challenges, edited by Richard E. Ocejo. Leeds: Emerald Publishing.