Laura R. Ford

B.A., Pacific Union College; J.D., Tulane University; M.P.A., Columbia University; LL.M., University of Washington; Ph.D., Cornell University
With a background in both sociology and law, Professor Laura Ford’s research and teaching areas include law, religion and society, economic sociology, social theory, the history and development of intellectual property, and historical sociology. She has published in journals such as Theory and Society; Cardozo Public Law, Policy, and Ethics Journal; Max Weber Studies; The American Sociologist; Socio-Legal Review; Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society; and California Western Law Review. Professor Ford’s publications also include a chapter written for the edited volume, The Sacred and the Law: The Durkheimian Legacy (Werner Gephart and Daniel Witte, eds., 2017). Ford’s in-progress book—The Intellectual Property of Nations: Sociological and Historical Perspectives on a Modern Legal Institution, under contract with Cambridge University Press—offers a macrohistorical account of the emergence of intellectual property as a new type of legal property. Ford is an active member of the American Sociological Association, and was recently elected to serve as a council member for the ASA’s History of Sociology Section. She also maintains a close relationship with the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy, where she was a Postdoctoral Fellow from 2014 to 2016.