Hannah Wohl

Hannah Wohl is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For the 2023-2024 academic year, she is a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her academic journey includes a Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University and a postdoctoral fellowship in sociology at Columbia University.

Wohl's research focuses on judgment, valuation, and creativity in social interaction. Her work bridges cultural and economic sociological approaches with other subfields and disciplines, drawing on rich empirical data to theorize core sociological concepts including valuation, morality, and meaning. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research in the New York contemporary art market and is currently studying the Los Angeles pornography and adult content creation industry. Her theoretical contributions include concepts like 'aesthetic confidence' and 'community sense,' which explore how aesthetic judgments shape social interactions and group belonging.

Her publications reveal consistent engagement with how meaning, value, and judgment operate in cultural fields. Across her work on art markets, creative industries, reading practices, and sexualized interactions, she examines the relational nature of valuation processes. Her research demonstrates how creative producers, consumers, and critics navigate uncertainty and construct meaning through social interaction, with particular attention to how status hierarchies shape these processes.

Wohl teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at UC Santa Barbara including Sociology of Creative Industries, Sociology of Culture, Classical Sociological Theory, and Honors Thesis Practicum. Previously at Columbia University, she taught Classical Sociological Theory and Qualitative Analysis at the graduate level.