CEW+ celebrates Zoe’s dedication to marginalized workers and names her a Riecker Graduate Student Research Fellow.

Zoe Chanin is a PhD student in the University of Michigan Department of Sociology. She specializes in the sociology of law and political economy with a focus on workplace conflict and the legal institutions designed to manage it. She is the founding Executive Content Editor of Sociology for the Michigan Journal of Law & Society. She has also conducted socio-legal research for University Responses to Sexual Assault and research with faculty at the U-M Law School regarding early modern work and employment. Prior to graduate school, she coordinated the public policy arm of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution. She was also the Graduate Research Director of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at Binghamton University, where she earned her master’s degree. Over the years, she has done activist work for the NYC Democratic Socialist of America’s Socialist Feminist Working Group, U-M’s Graduate Employees’ Organization, and Citizen Action of New York. 

Zoe’s CEW+ Fellowship will support a research paper on the impact of legal policy on workplace sexual harassment. Zoe writes, “#MeToo revealed that repeat offenders of workplace sexual misconduct were able to perpetrate again and again because of forced arbitration clauses hidden in the fine print of their victims’ employment contracts. As a result, President Biden signed into law a ban on forced arbitration of Title VII sexual harassment and assault claims, so that victimized workers could finally file discrimination lawsuits in court and speak out about sexual harassment at work.” Zoe will be the first researcher to assess the efficacy of the forced arbitration ban since it went into effect over a year ago. The paper is part of Zoe’s dissertation project, which examines how “predatory contractual provisions in the workplace” have contributed to inequality among marginalized workers. 

CEW+ celebrates Zoe’s dedication to marginalized workers and names her a Riecker Graduate Student Research Fellow.