Lester Andrist, PhD
Director 
Masters of Professional Studies in Public Safety Leadership and Administration (PSLA)

University of Maryland
​Department of Sociology
2112 Parren Mitchell
​Art-Sociology Bldg.
3834 Campus Drive
College Park, MD 20742

[email protected]
Twitter: @landrist

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My interests include understanding systems of inequality at the intersections of race, class, and gender. In recent work, I have examined the Global War on Terror and its impact on the racialization of Arabs and Muslims in the United States and abroad. In my dissertation, The Guantánamo Trials: Sovereignty and Subject Formation in the War on Terror, I examine how the creation of the detention camps at Guantánamo Bay is an example of how racial projects are bound up with the exercise of sovereign power. I further argue that systems of indefinite detention must be understood as creating the very racialized threats they claim to contain. 

In previous work I have explored a broad range of topics including guanxi networks among job seekers in Taiwan, patriarchy and the dark side of social capital in India, as well as the changes in marital timing in India. I have contributed to the scholarship on teaching and learning by writing about the emergence of a new form of ironic sexism and how educators can deal with it. I have also co-authored a paper that seeks to develop a video pedagogy.

I have taught a number of undergraduate-level courses in sociology including Introduction to Sociology, Sociology of Gender, Social Problems, and Statistics for Social Science. I have also taught classes in criminology and criminal justice, including Methods of Criminological Research and Criminal Justice Planning

I hold a PhD and an MA in Sociology from the University of Maryland, and a BA in Sociology from the University of Minnesota.