Sino Esthappan, ABF/Northwestern University Doctoral Fellow in Law & Social Science

Sino Esthappan

Doctoral Fellow

ABF/Northwestern University Doctoral Fellow in Law & Social Science

ABF Researcher

Sino Esthappan (he/him) is a Law & Social Science Doctoral Fellow at the American Bar Foundation and a PhD Candidate at Northwestern University. His research uses tools from the studies of culture, law, punishment, and organizations to answer new and old questions about how state organizations and the people they govern navigate risk and uncertainty amidst change. His dissertation examines how risk knowledge production, assessment, and adjudication practices in criminal courts shape state projects of inequality and social control. He uses interviews, observations and transcripts of bond court hearings, and linked administrative data to investigate how court officials culturally, institutionally, and morally construct and codify perceptions of risk in their negotiations of state power. In a related line of research, Esthappan asks how everyday risk assessment practices reproduce gender and sexual inequalities. He also consults on local policy advocacy projects, including most recently the Illinois Public Defense Study.

Esthappan’s research is funded by the American Bar Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and Northwestern University. He has received several paper awards from the American Society of Criminology, the American Sociological Association, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems among other venues, and his research is published in a wide range of outlets such as Criminal Justice Policy Review, Men & Masculinities, Social Problems, and Violence Against Women. Esthappan holds an MA from Northwestern University, an MSc from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and a BA from Vassar College.