The Graduate School and Institute of Pastoral Studies Commencement Addresses

Reuben Miller

(PhD '13) · Associate Professor, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, University of Chicago; MacArthur Fellow 

Reuben Miller (PhD ’13) is a sociologist, scholar, and 2022 MacArthur Fellow whose research examines mass incarceration, race, and democracy. He is the author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, an award-winning study of the legal, social, and economic consequences faced by individuals with felony convictions. Through research and public engagement, Miller has become a leading voice on the structural and human impacts of the American criminal justice system. 

Miller serves as Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and as Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. His work integrates sociology, law, and social work to examine how policies and institutions sustain inequality and shape the lives of formerly incarcerated individuals and their families. He also served as a chaplain at the Cook County Jail, an experience that informs his analysis of incarceration and reentry, highlighting the “afterlife” of incarceration that limits access to employment, housing, civic participation, and social mobility long after formal sentences end. 

Halfway Home was a finalist for the PEN America Literary Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and received two PROSE Awards and the Law and Society Association’s Herbert Jacob Book Prize. Miller has delivered a widely viewed TED Talk and regularly contributes to national discussions on criminal justice reform, democracy, and racial equity. 

Prior to the University of Chicago, Miller served on the University of Michigan faculty and held research affiliations focused on population studies and Black American life. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a fellow at New America and the Rockefeller Foundation, and a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and Dartmouth College. A native of Chicago, Miller holds a PhD in Sociology from Loyola University Chicago.