Ohio University

Sarah Pemberton is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ohio University. She recevied a Ph.D. (2011) and an M.A. (2003) in political science from the University of British Columbia, and a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford. Her research and teaching interests center in political theory, including the philosophy of punishment, post-structuralism, feminist and queer theory, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and the history of political thought. She has taught Introduction to Political Theory, Enlightenment and Its Critics, Social and Political Thought, Postcolonial and Trans-National Political Theory, and Critical Theories of Criminal Justice.

Dr Pemberton's research theorizes contemporary power relations in the English and American criminal justice systems. Her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled Indiscipline, Punishment, Gender and Race identifies three trends that challenge Foucault's account of power and the prison: rising incarceration rates due to more severe sentences, prison privatization, and the stark racialized and gendered disproportionality of prison populations. This research suggests that although Foucault's account of disciplinary power generates valuable insights about the construction of the subject, his conceptual framework overlooks the ways in which imprisonment contributes to socio-economic inequality, and constructs racialized and gendered identities.