The American Bar Foundation (ABF) has awarded doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships to six exceptional scholars. Selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants, these scholars were chosen for their impressive empirical and interdisciplinary research proposals in law and social science.
The research of these doctoral and postdoctoral fellows focuses on a variety of subjects connected to the ABF’s research portfolios. This year’s incoming fellows have studied, taught, and conducted research at colleges, universities, and research institutes across the country and around the world. They bring a wide range of valuable perspectives to the ABF’s collaborative research community.
The ABF’s incoming doctoral fellows are Anna Fox, Jane Y. Jeong, Christopher E. Robertson, and Kris Rosentel.
The ABF’s incoming postdoctoral fellows are Ellie Frazier and Grigory Gorbun.
For over thirty years, the ABF has offered doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships to foster the next generation of scholars in law, social science, and higher education. These fellowships offer the opportunity to engage with a rigorous, engaged, interdisciplinary community of scholars, to gain feedback on scholarly and professional projects in workshop settings, and to utilize the ABF’s resources toward their academic goals.
Fellows receive valuable mentorship from ABF researchers, a stipend to support living expenses while they complete their dissertation projects, and additional support for research expenses. Former fellows have built on their experiences at the ABF by moving on to promising and exciting careers. Ninety-two percent of fellows from 2008 to 2020 have been appointed to tenure track positions at universities; others have found success as legal professionals, applied researchers, and in other roles.
These fellowships are possible thanks to the support of the Law & Society Association, the AccessLex Institute, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago.
Meet the 2025 Doctoral Fellows:
Anna Fox is an ABF/University of Chicago Doctoral Fellow in Law & Social Science. They are a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Chicago who uses interview, archival, and geospatial methods to examine questions about gender, family, race, and violence in the empirical context of policing. Across several different projects, Fox investigates how police violence shapes and is shaped by different structures of gender and sexuality, and how this dynamic relationship relates to racial inequality. Read more about Anna Fox here.
Jane Y. Jeong (she/her) is an ABF/AccessLex Institute Doctoral Fellow in Legal & Higher Education. She is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Special Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research investigates how special education law and policy reflect and reinforce broader hegemonic structures and ideologies. She examines how these forces shape the implementation of policy and the lived experiences of historically marginalized families navigating disability-related service systems. Read more about Jane Y. Jeong here.
Christopher E. Robertson is an ABF/LSA Doctoral Fellow in Law & Inequality. He is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities whose research examines the social and health consequences of legal control. His dissertation, “Covenanted-Policing: Policing, Spatial Racism, and Health (In)Equity in Minneapolis, MN,” investigates how the use of racially discriminatory housing deeds in the early twentieth century influences contemporary policing practices, community safety, and neighborhood health outcomes. Read more about Christopher E. Roberston here.
Kris Rosentel is an ABF/Northwestern University Doctoral Fellow in Law & Social Science. He is a PhD candidate in Sociology and an MS candidate in Statistics at Northwestern University. His research examines the causes and consequences of LGBTQ inequalities in the criminal legal system, with particular focus on how neighborhoods, mobility, and social networks shape these disparities. His dissertation, “Locating the New Lavender Scare: The Socio-Spatial Structure of LGBTQ Disparities in Arrest,” investigates why disparities in arrest, incarceration, and community supervision have persisted despite three decades of growing social acceptance and legal reforms in the United States. Read more about Kris Rosentel here.
Meet the 2025 Postdoctoral Fellows:
Grigory Gorbun (he/him) is an ABF/AccessLex Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Legal & Higher Education. He is a legal and linguistic anthropologist studying how the authority of law is produced and contested beyond conventional legal and political institutions. His research relies on ethnography, interviews, and interactional analysis to reveal how attitudes toward law are transferred, upheld, and anchored in socially recognizable patterns of communication. Gorbun received his MA in Anthropology of Law from Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Read more about Grigory Gorbun here.
Ellie Frazier (she/her) is an ABF/AccessLex Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Legal & Higher Education. She is a political science and sociolegal studies scholar whose research and teaching focus broadly on access to justice, social movements, and comparative politics. Her dissertation investigates the political, social, and legal processes through which nonlawyer services emerged and evolved across colonial, authoritarian, and democratic state building in South Africa. By shedding light on these dynamics, the project seeks to clarify the opportunities and challenges of integrating non-lawyers into democratic institutions as part of access to justice initiatives. Read more about Ellie Frazier here.
###
About the American Bar Foundation
The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is the world’s leading research institute for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. The ABF seeks to expand knowledge and advance justice through innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law, legal processes, and legal institutions. To further this mission the ABF will produce timely, cutting-edge research of the highest quality to inform and guide the legal profession, the academy, and society in the United States and internationally. The ABF’s primary funding is provided by the American Bar Endowment and the Fellows of The American Bar Foundation.