Katherine Jensen

Research Interest Statement:

Katherine Jensen is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her PhD in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, with a Doctoral Portfolio in African and African Diaspora Studies. Before joining the University of Wisconsin, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Center for Inter-American Policy & Research at Tulane University. She is a former Fulbright Fellow and P.E.O. Scholar. As an ethnographer, her research interests include race/racism, refugees and immigration, political sociology, and forced migration in the Americas, with a focus on Brazil and the Southern Cone. Her work has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Qualitative Sociology, American Behavioral Scientist, Social Currents, City & Community, and Contexts, as well as in edited volumes with university presses. Her first book “The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil” was published in 2023 at the University of Chicago Press.

Education:

Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin (2018)

Departmental Areas of Interest:

Race and Ethnic Studies; Political Sociology; Qualitative Methods; Culture

Classes:

Soc 496 Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality (Fall 2020)
Soc 496 Asylum and Refugees (Spring 2020)

Other Campus Affiliations:

Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program

Selected Publications:

Katherine Jensen. 2023. “From the Asylum Official’s Point of View: Frames of Perception and Evaluation in Refugee Status Determination.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 49(13):3455-3472.

Águeda Ortega, Katherine Jensen, and Javier Auyero. 2023. “You Will Never Walk Alone: Ethnographic Training as Collective Endeavor.” Teaching Sociology:1-14.

Katherine Jensen and Lisa M. Sousa Dias. 2022. “Varied Racialization and Legal Inclusion: Haitian, Syrian, and Venezuelan Forced Migrants in Brazil.” American Behavioral Scientist 66(13):1797-1815.

Katherine Jensen. 2021. “Contexts of Reception Seen and Constituted from Below: The Production of Refugee Status Apathy.” Qualitative Sociology 44(3):455-471.

Katherine Jensen. 2021. “The Meanings of Refugee Status.” Contexts 20(1):10-15. “New Ethnographies of the Global South” Special Issue, eds. Victoria Reyes and Marco Garrido.

Javier Auyero. 2019. “Teaching and Learning the Craft: The Construction of Ethnographic Objects.” Research in Urban Sociology (Special Issue, Urban Ethnography: Legacies and Challenges) 16:69-87.

Katherine Jensen. 2018. “The Epistemic Logic of Asylum Screening: (Dis)embodiment and the Production of Asylum Knowledge in Brazil.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41(5):2615-2633.

Katherine Jensen. 2018. “El asilo pensado como un campo: percepciones, posturas y relaciones en el proceso de refugio en Brasil.” Pp. 27-50 in Pierre Bourdieu en la sociología latinoamericana: El uso de campo y habitus en la investigación, eds. R. Castro and H. J. Suárez. Mexico City, MX: UNAM Press.

Shapira, Harel, Katherine Jensen, and Ken-Hou Lin. 2018. “Trends and Patterns of Concealed Handgun License Applications: A Multi-State Analysis.” Social Currents 5(1):3-14.

Collins, Caitlyn, Katherine Jensen, and Javier Auyero. 2017. “A Proposal for Public Sociology as Localized Intervention and Collective Enterprise: The Makings and Impact of Invisible in Austin.” Qualitative Sociology 40(2):191-214.

Katherine Jensen. 2015. “Kumar: Driving in the Nighttime.” Pp. 138-161 in Invisible in Austin: Life and Labor in an American City, edited by J. Auyero. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Auyero, Javier, and Katherine Jensen. 2015. “For Political Ethnographies of Urban Marginality.” City & Community 14(4):359-363.