Michele Cadigan, a PhD candidate of Sociology, has received a Horowitz Foundation Grant for her dissertation, Cannabis-Infused Dreams: A Market at the Crossroads between Criminal and Conventional, which draws on worker surveys, ethnographic field work, administrative data, and interviews to understand how racial equity is constructed in legalized recreational cannabis markets. Her work brings together frameworkers from economic sociology, law and society, and criminal justice research to understand the relationship between markets and the criminal justice system, and how race is implicated at the intersection between these institutions. In her dissertation, she compares state-sanctioned recreational cannabis markets in three U.S. cities to examine how different approaches to racial equity transform market spaces and market actors’ experiences in the industry.
Michele Cadigan is also recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and her work is additionally supported by the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute (ADAI), the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies (HBCLS), and the Center for Demography and Ecology (CSDE).