Carla Shedd is Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Columbia University.  Shedd received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in June 2006 and her A.B. in Economics and African American Studies from Smith College.  Her research and teaching interests focus on: crime and criminal justice; race and ethnicity; law and society; social inequality; and urban sociology. 

She is currently working on a multi-method book project that examines two institutions that prominently shape the lives of urban youth: the public school system and the criminal justice system. The symbiosis between the two is readily apparent, as the failings of the former contribute to the “success” of the latter. Using survey data from over 20,000 Chicago Public High School students and forty in-depth and interviews across four unique school environments, this work explores youth perceptions of social and criminal injustice by placing their interactions with police, teachers, and parents within the overarching structural context of racial, class, and gender dynamics in Chicago neighborhoods and schools.

Shedd has taught the following courses: Racial Disparities: Causes & Consequences (Graduate); Race & Place in Urban America; Crime, Law & Society; and Statistics/Methods. She has also been published in the American Sociological Review and Sociological Methods & Research. "

Selected Publications

Shedd, Carla and John Hagan. 2006. “Toward a Developmental and Comparative Conflict Theory of Race, Ethnicity, and Perceptions of Criminal Injustice.”  In Peterson, Krivo, and Hagan (Eds.) The Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America. New York: NYU Press.

Hagan, John, Carla Shedd, and Monique R. Payne. 2005. “Race, Ethnicity, and Youth Perceptions of Criminal Injustice.” American Sociological Review 70:381-407.

Hagan, John and Carla Shedd. 2005. “A Socio-Legal Conflict Theory of Perceptions of Criminal Injustice,” The University of Chicago Legal Forum. 261-288.

Hagan, John, Paul Hirschfield, and Carla Shedd. 2002. “First and Last Words: Apprehending the Social and Legal Facts of an Urban High School Shooting.” Sociological Methods & Research 31(2):218-254.