the researcher & research program
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I am cultural and historical sociologist of racism, colonialism, and cisheterosexism. In my current book project on the elite U.S. research professoriate, I investigate how historic racist and cissexist segregation is maintained through cultural processes of defining and justifying hireability from the 1860s to the present. In a second project on archives, I ask how people from marginalized gender, sexual, and faith backgrounds form anti/colonial, decolonial, and anti/casteist subjectivities through the collection of oral histories of queer and trans Sikhs in the U.S. and the creation of a public, oral history archive. While these are different empirical areas, what unifies my research is the focus on understanding how power and inclusion operate from "above" and "below", and how mundane actions can reveal the possibility of societal change in the United States.
I have been supported by the California Department of Social Services and Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs, The Institute for Transformative Practice at Brown University, a fellowship at the Swearer Center, the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity at Brown University, and the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship. My additional research projects have been supported by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America's Humanities Lab and the American Sociological Association's Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline. Some of my past project have considered how universities are sites for maintaining structural racism and colonialism, with a focus on university-neighborhood relations (mutual aid and libraries) and desegregating sociology. My research, in addition to peer-reviewed publications, has produced digital humanities projects (with Dr. Elena Shih), such as AMORStories, which is a digital oral history archive documenting the experiences of Providence organizers and residents who mobilized to create a mutual aid network in the face of the 2020 pandemic and in the absence of robust state support. |
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publications
Peer-reviewed
Kaur, Harleen and prabhdeep singh kehal. (Forthcoming, June 2023). Epistemic Wounded Attachments: Recovering Definitional Subjectivity through Colonial Libraries. History and Theory. Available here.
Carmine Perrotti, Georgina Manok, prabhdeep singh kehal, jesús hernández, and Adam Bush. (Forthcoming, Summer 2023). CAUSing a Commotion. Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor.
kehal, prabhdeep singh, Hirschman, Daniel, and Ellen Berrey. (2021) When Affirmative Action Disappears: Unexpected Patterns in Student Enrollments at Selective U.S. Institutions, 1990-2016. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Available here and pre-print available here.
kehal, prabhdeep singh, Garbes, Laura, and Kennedy, Michael D. (2021). Critical Sociology of Knowledge. In Lynette Spillman (Ed), Oxford Bibliographies in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Available here.
Kaur, Harleen and prabhdeep singh kehal. (2020). Sikhs as Implicated Subjects in the United States: A Reflective Essay (ਵਿਚਾਰ) on Gurmat-Based Interventions in the Movement for Black Lives. Sikh Research Journal, 5(2):68-86. Available here.
kehal, prabhdeep singh and Cadence Willse. (2020). Institutional Type, Organizational Pathways, and Student Engagement: Deepening Student Engagement and the Benefit-Use Paradox in Formal Engagement Spaces. Journal of Community Engagement in Higher Education 12(1):50-65. Available here.
Willse, Cadence, kehal, prabhdeep singh, and Mathew Johnson. (2020). Social Innovation and Civic Engagement: A Critical Praxis for Engagement in Higher Education. In E. Mlyn, and A. M. McBride (Eds.), The Civic Mission of Higher Education: Connecting Social Innovation and Civic Engagement. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Available here.
Under review
prabhdeep singh kehal. Negotiating Utopia: Researcher Subjectivity Formation Through Relational Gender, Sexuality, and Faith.
kehal, prabhdeep singh and Laura Garbes. Manicuring Diversity: Allocating Diversity Tasks in US Public Organizations.
Journal Contributions
kehal, prabhdeep singh. Labor and Status in the Color Line of US Higher Education (July 2023). Thematic Review of Doing the Right Thing (Gasman), Broke (Hamilton and Nielsen), Point of Reckoning (Segal). Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Available here.
Kaur, Harleen and prabhdeep singh kehal. 2022. Forging a Piram Piyala in Sikh Studies: Meditations on Life, Love, and Scholarship (Introduction as Editors to a Special Issue). Sikh Research Journal 7(2):1-4. Available here.
Reviewed Public Sociology
kehal, prabhdeep singh, and Michael D. Kennedy. 2020. Graduate Education and Academic Labor for Graduate Students during the Pandemic. ASA Footnotes, 12. Available here.
kehal, prabhdeep singh. 2018. “Hitting the Wall: It’s Unfair to Expect Graduate Students to Shoulder All the Diversity Work.” Conditionally Accepted, Inside Higher Ed. Available here.
Kennedy, Michael, kehal, prabhdeep singh, and Laura Garbes. 2018. Excellence, reflexivity, and racism: On sociology’s nuclear contradiction and its abiding crisis. History, Theory and Sociology in an Age of Crisis, Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. Available here.
please feel free to reach out to me if you have difficulty obtaining a copy of publication materials
Kaur, Harleen and prabhdeep singh kehal. (Forthcoming, June 2023). Epistemic Wounded Attachments: Recovering Definitional Subjectivity through Colonial Libraries. History and Theory. Available here.
Carmine Perrotti, Georgina Manok, prabhdeep singh kehal, jesús hernández, and Adam Bush. (Forthcoming, Summer 2023). CAUSing a Commotion. Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor.
kehal, prabhdeep singh, Hirschman, Daniel, and Ellen Berrey. (2021) When Affirmative Action Disappears: Unexpected Patterns in Student Enrollments at Selective U.S. Institutions, 1990-2016. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Available here and pre-print available here.
kehal, prabhdeep singh, Garbes, Laura, and Kennedy, Michael D. (2021). Critical Sociology of Knowledge. In Lynette Spillman (Ed), Oxford Bibliographies in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Available here.
Kaur, Harleen and prabhdeep singh kehal. (2020). Sikhs as Implicated Subjects in the United States: A Reflective Essay (ਵਿਚਾਰ) on Gurmat-Based Interventions in the Movement for Black Lives. Sikh Research Journal, 5(2):68-86. Available here.
kehal, prabhdeep singh and Cadence Willse. (2020). Institutional Type, Organizational Pathways, and Student Engagement: Deepening Student Engagement and the Benefit-Use Paradox in Formal Engagement Spaces. Journal of Community Engagement in Higher Education 12(1):50-65. Available here.
Willse, Cadence, kehal, prabhdeep singh, and Mathew Johnson. (2020). Social Innovation and Civic Engagement: A Critical Praxis for Engagement in Higher Education. In E. Mlyn, and A. M. McBride (Eds.), The Civic Mission of Higher Education: Connecting Social Innovation and Civic Engagement. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Available here.
Under review
prabhdeep singh kehal. Negotiating Utopia: Researcher Subjectivity Formation Through Relational Gender, Sexuality, and Faith.
- Winner of Best Graduate Student Paper Award, Society of Social Problems Gender Division (2022)
kehal, prabhdeep singh and Laura Garbes. Manicuring Diversity: Allocating Diversity Tasks in US Public Organizations.
Journal Contributions
kehal, prabhdeep singh. Labor and Status in the Color Line of US Higher Education (July 2023). Thematic Review of Doing the Right Thing (Gasman), Broke (Hamilton and Nielsen), Point of Reckoning (Segal). Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Available here.
Kaur, Harleen and prabhdeep singh kehal. 2022. Forging a Piram Piyala in Sikh Studies: Meditations on Life, Love, and Scholarship (Introduction as Editors to a Special Issue). Sikh Research Journal 7(2):1-4. Available here.
Reviewed Public Sociology
kehal, prabhdeep singh, and Michael D. Kennedy. 2020. Graduate Education and Academic Labor for Graduate Students during the Pandemic. ASA Footnotes, 12. Available here.
kehal, prabhdeep singh. 2018. “Hitting the Wall: It’s Unfair to Expect Graduate Students to Shoulder All the Diversity Work.” Conditionally Accepted, Inside Higher Ed. Available here.
Kennedy, Michael, kehal, prabhdeep singh, and Laura Garbes. 2018. Excellence, reflexivity, and racism: On sociology’s nuclear contradiction and its abiding crisis. History, Theory and Sociology in an Age of Crisis, Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. Available here.
please feel free to reach out to me if you have difficulty obtaining a copy of publication materials