Ongoing Research
David is currently principal investigator of two major projects:
- The first project, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a multi-state study of the rise of local health equity interventions following the 2020 protests against police violence and mass criminalization.
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Evidence for Action Grant 80638 (Principal Investigator) ($550,000)
- The second project, funded by the Mellon Foundation, establishes the Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab (Movements Lab), a multiplatform research lab and human rights documentation project that uses archival and survey methods to explore the politically contested nature of the prison state.
- Mellon Foundation Imagining Freedom Initiative Grant R-2306-15878 to fund the Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab (Principal Investigator and Director) ($1,716,000)
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Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab
READ MOREThe Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab is a public sociology and human rights documentation project founded with a $1.7 million grant from the Mellon Foundation.
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Contesting the State: Embodied Threat and the Emergence of Prisoner Mobilization
READ MOREPrior studies cast U.S. imprisonment as politically demobilizing. This article complicates that proposition by exploring when, and how, threat under penal confinement leads people to mobilize. Using interviews with currently incarcerated and recently released men across three states, I show that although imprisonment generally fosters political inaction, collective mobilization does arise under certain conditions.
Recognition: Winner, 2026 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award, ASA Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements; Winner, 2026 Distinguished Article Award, ASA Sociology of Law Section; Runner-Up/Honorable Mention, 2026 Distinguished Article Award, ASA Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance; Runner-Up/Honorable Mention, 2026 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award, ASA Political Sociology Section
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Carceral Passages: Coming of Age in Prison America
READ MOREImprisonment is recognized as routine in the lives of disadvantaged young men. Scholars center the impact of relatively brief prison experiences on postprison early adulthood, but this approach overlooks the many who are imprisoned for long periods. This study addresses this concern by analyzing interviews with African American and Afro-Latino men who were sentenced as youth and early adults to long prison terms. Prison-like conditions pervaded men’s life histories in ways that shaped how they made sense of incarceration and early adulthood.
Recognition: Winner, 2025 Distinguished Article Award, ASA Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance; Runner-Up/Honorable Mention, 2025 Outstanding Scholarly Contribution, ASA Section on Children and Youth
