By Vic Cox

A scholar with a keen interest in social movements and how police forces control protests has been named winner of the 2006-07 Harold J. Plous Memorial Award.

Jennifer Earl, associate professor of sociology, will base her May 9 Plous lecture on some of the research that has earned esteem from her colleagues.

The lecture, set for 4 p.m. in HSSB 6020 (the McCune Conference Room), is titled “Arrests and Political Repression: Understanding the Policing of the 2004 Republican National Convention and Its Implications.”

She says that in her talk she will “critically examine this (current) benign vision of protest-related arrests, particularly mass arrests, and argue that alternatives that do not force the public to choose between physical safety and civil liberties are available.”

Like many of her predecessors, Earl was nominated by her department for the award when she was an assistant professor but already selected for tenure. Her accomplishments since joining UCSB in 2002 as a newly minted Ph.D. were widely recognized.

“Professor Earl has proven to be an incredibly productive young scholar, publishing a total of 17 pieces with an additional six publications in press during her…career as an assistant professor,” wrote Verta Taylor, professor and chair of sociology, in her nomination letter to the selection committee.

In the five-page letter, Taylor also documented Earl’s contributions to teaching and university service.

The committee, headed by Lisa Hajjar, professor of law and society, was equally laudatory, calling Earl “a powerhouse intellectual with a national reputation in her area of expertise….” It noted the sociologist’s highly competitive National Science Foundation CAREER Award for young faculty in 2006 as well as her one-on-one work with students doing independent research and her mentorship of students in the Minority Opportunity Research Program.

Earl also recently became the director of the Center for Information Technology and Society at UCSB, an outgrowth of her combined interests in Internet activism and the impact of technology.