Welcome
Michelle Smirnova is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Affiliate Faculty member of the Race, Ethnic, & Gender Studies department at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She is also a Diversity & Inclusion fellow for the university. She recently won the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Humanities and Social Sciences' Royall Professorship, the highest honor bestowed by the college.
Her first book, The Prescription-to-Prison Pipeline: An Intersectional Analysis of the Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain (Duke University Press 2023) draws upon interviews with eighty incarcerated individuals to illustrate how contradictions in medical practices, social ideals, and legal policies disproportionately medicalize and criminalize already-marginalized populations. Instead of offering social support and financial resources as a means of remedying structural inequalities, Dr. Smirnova argues that individualized medical and criminal approaches end up exacerbating rather than ameliorating problems. This book was reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, Family Medicine, the Journal of Anthropological Research, and the Journal of Historical Behavioral Science , featured in Inquest, Work in Progress, and WUSTL’s The Source and Smirnova was hosted on KPFA’s Law & Disorder, The Annex, The New Books, and Infectious Historians podcasts.
Her second book, Lean Into Tension: How to Grow a Housing Justice Movement, is under contract with Princeton University Press. In this monograph, she explores the historical political, social, and financial factors that gave rise to a local housing movement and how this group translates embodied knowledge into visions for local, national, and global change.
For a third book project, she has also been researching DIY science in pre- and post-COVID contexts, seeking to understand how and why communities move science from institutional settings and into individual homes and community spaces and who is rewarded or punished for their anti-institutional work.
Dr. Smirnova serves as the qualitative lead on the $1.3 million KC Violence Prevention Fund evaluation team that seeks to understand the upstream causes of gun violence in Kansas City and how local organizations and communities are working to address those issues. She also serves on the Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees and volunteers in support of Project Homeless Connect.
Across her research and professional experience, Dr. Smirnova has developed methodological skills in content and discourse analysis, cognitive and semi-structured interviewing, focus groups, survey design, as well as ethnography. She is particularly attentive to issues of power, trust, and inequality, both as research and teaching subjects, but also as something in which she is an active participant.
Her first book, The Prescription-to-Prison Pipeline: An Intersectional Analysis of the Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain (Duke University Press 2023) draws upon interviews with eighty incarcerated individuals to illustrate how contradictions in medical practices, social ideals, and legal policies disproportionately medicalize and criminalize already-marginalized populations. Instead of offering social support and financial resources as a means of remedying structural inequalities, Dr. Smirnova argues that individualized medical and criminal approaches end up exacerbating rather than ameliorating problems. This book was reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, Family Medicine, the Journal of Anthropological Research, and the Journal of Historical Behavioral Science , featured in Inquest, Work in Progress, and WUSTL’s The Source and Smirnova was hosted on KPFA’s Law & Disorder, The Annex, The New Books, and Infectious Historians podcasts.
Her second book, Lean Into Tension: How to Grow a Housing Justice Movement, is under contract with Princeton University Press. In this monograph, she explores the historical political, social, and financial factors that gave rise to a local housing movement and how this group translates embodied knowledge into visions for local, national, and global change.
For a third book project, she has also been researching DIY science in pre- and post-COVID contexts, seeking to understand how and why communities move science from institutional settings and into individual homes and community spaces and who is rewarded or punished for their anti-institutional work.
Dr. Smirnova serves as the qualitative lead on the $1.3 million KC Violence Prevention Fund evaluation team that seeks to understand the upstream causes of gun violence in Kansas City and how local organizations and communities are working to address those issues. She also serves on the Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees and volunteers in support of Project Homeless Connect.
Across her research and professional experience, Dr. Smirnova has developed methodological skills in content and discourse analysis, cognitive and semi-structured interviewing, focus groups, survey design, as well as ethnography. She is particularly attentive to issues of power, trust, and inequality, both as research and teaching subjects, but also as something in which she is an active participant.
