Zsuzsa Gille

Zsuzsa Gille is a Professor of Sociology and Director of Global Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds additional affiliations with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, Geography and Geographic Information Science, Global Studies Programs, the European Union Center, and the Russian, East European and Eurasian Center.

• Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1999

Her research bridges transnational sociology, environmental sociology, and the sociology of consumption, focusing on the intersection of globalization, EU policy, and post-socialist transitions. She examines how materiality and waste regimes shape social structures, with empirical work on food safety standards, environmental justice, and post-socialist industrial legacies.

Her publications analyze waste policies through global and regional lenses, food production ethics, and post-socialist environmental governance. Key works include The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies (2022) and Paprika, Foie Gras, and Red Mud (2016).

• Recipient of the 2008 AAASS Davis Prize honorable mention for From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History

She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on global ethnography, environmental sociology, postsocialist studies, and contemporary theory. Her methodological approach combines global ethnography, relational comparison, and the extended case method.