Professor Monica Bell Named Radcliffe Fellow
Professor of Law Monica C. Bell ’09 has been named a 2025–26 Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellow, the Institute announced on May 15.
“In these uncertain times, I am more convinced than ever before that Radcliffe’s interdisciplinary approach is crucial to creating the transformative research, scholarship, writing, art, and, ultimately, societal change that we need,” said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, in an announcement. “We welcome this new cohort in the firm belief that bringing outstanding individuals together — with their disparate backgrounds, training, perspectives, approaches, and ideologies — and creating an environment that supports meaningful discourse is how we push the limits of human knowledge and understanding.”
Bell, a sociologist and legal scholar who writes about inequality, violence, safety, and racial justice, was named the Drew Gilpin Faust Fellow. At Radcliffe, she will complete a book manuscript that punctuates empirical poems — poems created from coded interview transcripts — with research notes, policy analysis, personal stories, and images to offer insights on how Black women living in race-class subjugated neighborhoods navigate intense and arbitrary legal authority.
Bell's scholarship has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, the Yale Law Journal, Journal of Economic Perspectives, NYU Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and other journals. She has also published writing in popular outlets such as Politico, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Inquest, and The Washington Post.
Bell has received recognition for her scholarship, teaching, and mentorship, such as the Yale Law Women Faculty Excellence Award, the Jane Addams Article Award as well as other distinguished article prizes from the American Sociological Association, a visiting scholar fellowship at the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Derrick A. Bell Jr. Award from the American Association of Law Schools.
Each Radcliffe fellowship cohort draws leading scholars in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and arts — along with writers, journalists, playwrights, and other distinguished professionals, according to the announcement. The Harvard Radcliffe Institute is one of the world’s leading centers for interdisciplinary exploration.
