Rachel L. Einwohner

Ph.D., University of Washington (1997)

M.A., University of Washington (1991)

B.A., University of Pennsylvania (1988)

Specialization

social movements; political sociology; qualitative methods, gender

Rachel L. Einwohner joined the Purdue faculty in 1998. Her research focuses on the dynamics of protest and resistance, and her interests include questions related to protest emergence and effectiveness, the role of gender and other identities in protest dynamics, protesters’ sense of efficacy, and the creation of solidarity in diverse movements. She has explored these topics with theoretically-driven analyses of a diverse set of movements and cases of protest, including the U.S. animal rights movement, the college-based anti-sweatshop movement, and Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. She is also part of an interdisciplinary research team that is using Twitter data to examine diversity and inclusion in contemporary social movements. Her published work has appeared in journals such as the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, and Mobilization. She has also co-edited two volumes: The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women's Social Movement Activism (with Holly J. McCammon, Verta Taylor, and Jo Reger; Oxford University Press, 2017) and Identity Work in Social Movements (with Jo Reger and Daniel J. Myers; University of Minnesota Press, 2008), and recently served as Deputy Editor for Gender & Society. Her current work, which has received funding from the NSF and the NEH, examines the efforts to create resistance movements in the Jewish ghettos of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Vilna, and Lodz.