Ellen Berrey

Ellen Berrey is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her research engages multiple sociological subfields, particularly law, inequality, race and diversity, culture, and organizations, with an emerging interest in environmental sociology. Her work is centrally focused on the politics and paradoxes of solving social problems. She examines how organizations interpret and implement policies aimed at addressing social problems, such as racial discrimination and environmental devastation, and how they navigate legal constraints and political opposition. She has a particular interest in how cultural ideals—such as diversity, fairness, and sustainability—get mobilized, institutionalized, and contested by decision-makers, organizational actors, and activists. Her projects to date have examined diversity discourse, affirmative action politics, inequality in higher education, employment discrimination law, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability politics. In addition to her appointment at University of Toronto, she is an affiliated scholar of the American Bar Foundation.