Biography

Asad L. Asad is Assistant Professor of Sociology and a faculty affiliate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. His scholarly interests encompass social stratification; race, ethnicity, and immigration; surveillance and social control; and health. Asad's research agenda considers how institutional categories—in particular, citizenship and legal status—matter for multiple forms of inequality. He is the author of the book Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life (Princeton University Press). His most recent research projects examine the effects of immigration enforcement on health, the capacity of immigrant-serving organizations to undo the hardships of the U.S. immigration system, and the role of the federal judiciary in immigration enforcement.

Asad's research has been published in several outlets, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1 and 2), Law & Society Review, International Migration Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Social Science & Medicine, among other outlets. His work has received awards from the American Sociological Association, including the Louis Wirth Award for Best Article given by the Section on International Migration, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation (1 and 2). 

Asad teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on race, ethnicity, and immigration, as well as an undergraduate course on research design and preparation. He is the recipient of the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Teaching Award and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows Book Award. 

Asad earned his B.A. in Political Science and Spanish Language and Culture from the University of Wisconsin, and his A.M. and Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University.