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Heather Schoenfeld (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2009) is Assistant Professor of Sociology. From 2009-2011 Dr. Schoenfeld was a postdoctoral fellow/visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University School of Law with a joint appointment in the Northwestern Department of Sociology. She is the recipient of the Law and Society Association Dissertation Prize for her research on the history of the dramatic rise of imprisonment in the United States. In her 2010 article in Law & Society Review, Schoenfeld provocatively argues that prison overcrowding litigation unintentionally contributed to mass incarceration in Florida. Her scholarship examines how race, law and politics shape systems of punishment in both domestic and international contexts. Dr. Schoenfeld has published in a variety of journals, including Annual Review of Sociology, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, and Criminology & Public Policy, (please see Dr. Schoenfeld's 2011 policy essay, "Putting Politics in Penal Reform," from Criminology & Public Policy). Her research and teaching interests include law and society, crime and punishment, race and inequality, political sociology, and historical and comparative methods. Currently, Dr. Schoenfeld is working on a book that looks at the politicization of punishment policy in Florida since the 1950s.