Laurence Ralph
William D. Zabel '58 Professor of Human Rights
American Studies and Public Policy
Princeton University
Co-Director, Center on Transnational Policing
Speech Title
The Value of Repair: Injury and Violence in the American City
Short biographical sketch
Laurence Ralph is a professor, writer, and filmmaker whose work examines the forces that shape life, loss, and survival in Black communities. His scholarship traces how policing, incarceration, and the drug trade produce landscapes where injury becomes woven into everyday life, rendered with calm, unflinching precision.
His first book, Renegade Dreams, received the C. Wright Mills Award and the J. I. Staley Prize. His second, The Torture Letters, earned the Robert B. Textor Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology and inspired an animated short film featured in The New York Times Op-Docs series. His most recent book, Sito: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him, has been recognized as an In the Margins Top Nonfiction Honoree, received the Council on Anthropology and Education Outstanding Book Award, and the Society of North American Anthropology Established Scholar Book Award. Matthew Desmond described Sito as "a memoir and a sociological analysis; a critique, a confession, and a prayer."
Ralph's essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, TIME, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Chicago Review of Books, Boston Review, and Literary Hub. He has held tenured appointments in African and African American Studies and Anthropology at Harvard University and now serves as Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the National Academies. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Laurence Ralph is a professor, writer, and filmmaker whose work examines the forces that shape life, loss, and survival in Black communities. His scholarship traces how policing, incarceration, and the drug trade produce landscapes where injury becomes woven into everyday life, rendered with calm, unflinching precision.
His first book, Renegade Dreams, received the C. Wright Mills Award and the J. I. Staley Prize. His second, The Torture Letters, earned the Robert B. Textor Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology and inspired an animated short film featured in The New York Times Op-Docs series. His most recent book, Sito: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him, has been recognized as an In the Margins Top Nonfiction Honoree, received the Council on Anthropology and Education Outstanding Book Award, and the Society of North American Anthropology Established Scholar Book Award. Matthew Desmond described Sito as "a memoir and a sociological analysis; a critique, a confession, and a prayer."
Ralph's essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, TIME, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Chicago Review of Books, Boston Review, and Literary Hub. He has held tenured appointments in African and African American Studies and Anthropology at Harvard University and now serves as Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the National Academies. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.