Sarah Quinn is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington. Her work focuses on the historical development of states and markets in the United States, as part of a larger effort to understand how social categories constitute and justify systems of power.

Quinn is the author of the American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation (Princeton University Press, 2019), which showed how Americans have long turned to credit markets to avoid economic redistribution, and which illuminated the extensive but often overlooked role of the U.S. government in the development of American credit market. American Bonds was awarded the Alice Amsden Book Prize from Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and the Viviana Zelizer Book Award from the Economic Sociology of the American Sociology Association. It received and Honorable Mention for Theory Section of American Sociology Association’s Book Award, and was the subject of a book symposium from the Socio-Economic Review.

Quinn’s writing has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, The Annual Review of Sociology, Sociological Theory, and other publications. She has been quoted, and her work has been discussed, in outlets such as the BBC News Daily, NPR’s Planet Money, The New Republic, and CNN’s The Downside Up Podcast. She has won multiple awards for her writing, teaching, and mentoring. Her ongoing research investigates political complexity, financial markets, the social meaning of home equity, and profound changes underway in the global political economy. With Marion Fourcade and Greta Krippner, she is the editor of the interdisciplinary volume Political Economy, Rebooted, now accepted for publication with Duke University Press.

At the University of Washington, Quinn is a member of the Standing Committee for the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. She has a BA from Smith College, and a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and has held fellowships at the University of Michigan Society of Fellows and Institute for Advanced Study.