Department of Sociology

Breadcrumb

Keenan Wilder

Graduate Student, Successful Defense March 14, 2025
keenan_wilder@brown.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Research Interests Political and Comparative Historical Sociology, Sociology of Empire, Labor, Social Movements, Social Inequality, Hiring Processes, The Middle East and North Africa, Archival and Mixed Methods
Degree(s) Ph.D. Brown University; M.A. New York University; B.A. University of New Mexico
Committee Members Nitsan Chorev (chair), Patrick Heller, Josh Pacewicz, Jennifer Johnson (History), Charlie Kurzman (University of North Carolina)

Biography

Year of Entry: 2017

Keenan's research uses the workplace to understand larger questions related to democracy, empire, and inequality. His dissertation rethinks how social movements change as they become formal organizations, using a comparison of labor movements in Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain. Drawing on resource dependency theory, he provides a new explanation of why some unions are able to maintain grassroots dynamism and limited but functional democracy under authoritarian rule, and why others are unable to do the same. His other projects rethink the relationship between oil wealth and opportunities for the labor movement, relational theories of income inequality, and the conditions that allow for unionization under colonial rule. 

Publications

  • Wilder, Keenan. 2023. "Getting a Worker: Recruiters, Culture, and On‐the‐Job Skilling." Sociological Forum 38(2):532-52 ;
  • Wilder, Keenan. 2015. “The origins of labour autonomy in authoritarian Tunisia.” Contemporary Social Science 10(4):349-63. 

Awards

  • Mayer N. Zald Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Student Paper Award – ASA section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, 2025
  • Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council, 2022
  • Global Mobility Research Fellowship, The Graduate School (Brown University), 2021
  • Long-Term Research Grant, American Institute for Maghrib Studies, 2020
  • Graduate Program in Development Fellowship, Watson Institute (Brown University), 2018

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