Sarah Quinn

Sarah Quinn is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington, affiliated with Urban@UW and the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley (2010). Her research focuses on political institutions, financial markets, and processes of moralization/classification. Key areas include the historical development of U.S. credit policies, the interaction of social categories with power structures, and the sociological analysis of public finance.

Education: Ph.D. (2010), M.A. (2006) in Sociology from UC Berkeley; B.A. in Sociology from Smith College (1998). Awards include the Alice Amsden Book Prize (2020) and Viviana Zelizer Book Award (2020) for her seminal work American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation. Grants include a $142,000 award from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (2013–2016) for studying federal credit programs.

Teaching spans graduate/undergraduate courses in economic sociology, sociological theory, and qualitative methods. She has held fellowships at the University of Michigan Society of Fellows (2010–2012) and the Institute for Advanced Study (2019–2020). Active in professional service, she chairs committees for the American Sociological Association and serves on editorial boards for journals like Sociological Theory and Cambridge Studies in Historical Sociology.