Megan Kang is a sociologist who studies crime and violence in America and their impact on daily life.

Kang’s work treats violence not only as a behavior but as a form of interaction and identity that emerges under conditions of uncertainty. Her current book project, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, explores how young men become known as “shooters” and how that identity constrains their ability to leave violence behind. She traces how gang fragmentation and firearm availability sustain these dynamics, and how reputational concerns shape both participation in criminal groups and transitions out of them.

Using ethnography, in-depth interviews, and econometrics, she examines the drivers of inequality in safety from multiple perspectives. Her work appears in PNAS, Criminology, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Journal of Marriage and Family, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Aeon, and Vital City. Kang is committed to public sociology through co-constructing knowledge with community and civic partners, writing media commentary and policy briefs, and maintaining publicly available dataset on household gun ownership.

Kang is an assistant professor who earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University, M.P.P. from The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and B.A. in History and Political Science from UC Berkeley. www.megankang.com