Dr. Emily Brissette

Dr. Brissette’s research focuses on social movements, the criminal legal system, and political culture in the US. She is interested in how understandings of the state change, how good citizenship is imagined, how different forms of violence are authorized or normalized, and how some groups are marginalized, criminalized, and/or targeted for containment or erasure. She is currently working on a comparative-historical study of conspiracy trials against social and racial justice movements in the US from the late 19th century onward. The project explores the relationship between the systemic critiques and radical visions the movements advanced and how the state framed each alleged conspiracy at trial, what this means for freedoms of association and thought, and how these prosecutions shed light on ongoing processes of state formation. Her work has been published in Theoretical Criminology, Social Movement Studies, Humanity & Society, and elsewhere.