Brooke Depenbusch

Brooke Depenbusch is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS). Her research focuses on US social policy, legal history, and the evolution of welfare state institutions. She is completing a book manuscript titled *Profiting Off Poverty: Precarity, Politics, and the Struggle Over the Safety Net, 1935-1980*, which examines the contentious history of state and local public assistance programs.

• Received the University of Minnesota's Best Dissertation Award in the Arts & Humanities
• Fellow of the American Society for Legal History's Wallace Johnson Program
• Taught at Colgate University as visiting faculty, nominated for the Phi Eta Sigma Professor of the Year award

Her courses at UIS explore intersections of law and systemic inequality in contemporary America. Recent work includes an article on Depression-era welfare politics in the *Journal of American History*.