Martin Eiermann

Research Interest Statement:

I study the politics of personal data and the consequences of becoming visible to—and being managed by—contemporary state institutions of care and social control. My work combines qualitative archival research with computational methods, including text analysis, network analysis, and statistical modeling. Recently published studies examine how the adoption of algorithmic risk scoring tools affects child welfare decision-making, identify the long-term health and educational consequences of childhood maltreatment and foster care placement, evaluate trade-offs between data access and identification risk in large federal child welfare datasets, and explain unexpectedly low racial disparities in infectious disease mortality during the 1918 pandemic. This research is built on a theoretical and substantive interest in the history of privacy and surveillance in the modern United States. In my book, The Limiting Principle: How Privacy Became a Public Issue, I examine the historical origins of America’s fragmented privacy architecture and demonstrate that the uneven legibility of different populations and types of information is built on a foundation of legally codified exceptions.

Education:

Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley (2022)

Departmental Areas of Interest:

Comparative-Historical Sociology; Demography and Ecology; Deviance, Law, and Social Control; Law and Society; Political Sociology; Science and Technology

Publications:

The Limiting Principle: How Privacy Became a Public Issue, Columbia University Press, July 2025.