Public sociology and community engagement are significant parts of my work as a sociologist.
My public-facing publications have included:
A recent op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about polarization and nonpartisan elections.
A report on engagement with police and local Black, Hmong, and Latinx populations in Madison, published in Police Chief Magazine
A review, published in The Conversation, of the political, demographic, and policing factors that contributed to the police violence against Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the ensuing protest, and the potential for similar events in other Wisconsin communities.
A discussion of the efforts to adapt local election practices to the COVID-19 Pandemic, published in Footnotes, the newsletter of the American Sociological Association.
An invited lecture, as part of the Wisconsin Idea Lecture Series, on exclusion and inequality in local politics in Wisconsin’s small cities.
Community-based projects have included:
Madison Police COPS program:
The Madison Police Department, Bayview Community Center, Nehemiah Community Development Corporation, and Centro Hispano of Dane County received a grant to build new pathways for engagement among local police, the Hmong, Black, and Latinx communities. Professor Randy Stoecker and I served as evaluators on the project, taking field notes at events, developing survey tools, and interviewing key stakeholders.
Legacy Community Alliance for Health:
The Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the MATCH project of the UW Public Health Institute developed the Legacy Community Alliance for Health project as a tool to provide Health in All Policies training to local government officials across Wisconsin. I served as an evaluator on the project, using interviews, document analysis, and other methods to examine the successes and challenges of bringing health and equity into municipal policies.
Stand Up to Hate
Stand Up to Hate is an initiative to engage youth across Wisconsin to strengthen their understanding of one another and the many communities that make up our state. It is a humanities-based project that will train young facilitators to host community conversations around religious, racial, ethnic, gender, and other marginalized identities that have tragically been a focus of hate-based violence and extremism in Wisconsin and across the country. Through these conversations, Wisconsin youth will play a key role in sharing stories of hate, survival, and resilience in Wisconsin, bridging the divides that shape our communities, and strengthening our democratic values and institutions.
Benny Witkovsky 