Katherine Jensen
Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Studies
8128 Sewell Social Science Bldg
1180 Observatory Dr
Madison, WI 53706
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. She is a former Fulbright Fellow, P.E.O. Scholar, and Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity (REI) Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at UW–Madison. Before joining UW, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Center for Inter-American Policy & Research at Tulane University.
As an ethnographer and qualitative sociologist, Jensen researches race/racism and ethnicity, the state, and immigration in Latin America, with a focus on Brazil and the Southern Cone. 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. It received multiple book award recognitions, including as a Finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her work is published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Qualitative Sociology, American Behavioral Scientist, and City & Community, among others.
Jensen received a University Distinguished Teaching Award in 2024, the Emil H. Steiger Award for excellence in junior faculty teaching.