Wendy N. Espeland

Short-term Researcher, the General Fellowship Programme, SCAS.
Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston

Wendy Espeland is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University.  She investigates how quantification
shapes politics, group identities and organizations focusing on environmental politics, the quantitative repre-
sentation of indigenous rights, the use of measures of sexual behavior in the gay rights movements, the role
of double-entry bookkeeping in legitimating merchant capitalism, and the effects of rankings on universities.
Her books include The Struggle for Water: Politics, Rationality, and Identity in the American Southwest and
(with Michael Sauder) Engines of Anxiety: Academic Rankings, Reputation, and Accountability and she is
co-editor of Worlds of Rankings. Her scholarship has also appeared in journals such as the American Journal
of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology and Law and Society Review. She
has received fellowships from Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Center for the Study of Organi-
zations, Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard and the Russell Sage Foundation.

Wendy N Espeland is in residence in May 2024.
This information is accurate as of the academic year 2023-24.