Susan S. Silbey

Susan S. Silbey holds the Leon and Anne Goldberg Chair in Humanities, Anthropology and Sociology, and is Professor of Behavioral and Policy Sciences in the Sloan School of Management where she teaches in the programs in Work and Organizational Studies and Economic Sociology. From 2017-2019, she served as Chair of the MIT Faculty.

Silbey is interested in the governance, regulatory and audit processes in complex organizations. Her current research focuses on the creation of management systems for containing risks, including ethical lapses, as well as environment, health and safety hazards. In addition, for fifteen years, she has been part of a team following a national panel of engineers from college to the workplace. She has recently begun several projects on the regulation of big tech and AI supply chains.

Her award-winning articles and books include “Why do biologists and chemists do safety differently? The Reproduction of Cultural Variation through Pragmatic Regulation,” (2021); “I’m Not A Feminist, But… The Hegemony of a Meritocratic Ideology and The Limits of Critique Among Women in Engineering,” (2018); “Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Legal Authority” (2003); and The Common Place of Law: Stories From Everyday Life (1998).

Silbey is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards including the James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, (2019-2020); Institut des Etudes Avancees (2015-2016); Paris; Russell Sage Foundation (2014-2015); Stanton Wheeler Prize for Mentoring (2015); John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2009); Doctor Honoris Causa from Ecole Normale Superiere Cachan in Paris (2006); and the Harry Kalven Jr. Prize for advancing the sociology of law (2009). She is Past President of the Law & Society Association (1995-1996), and a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.