On February 28, 2025, the Center on Transnational Policing hosted a roundtable discussion event, “Writing Social Problems Through the Personal,” co-sponsored by Criminal Justice @ SPIA and the Department of Anthropology. Moderated by Lucas Bessire (Professor, Colorado School of Mines; Stanley Kelley, Jr., Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching, Princeton University), this roundtable discussion centered on the interplay between the personal and the social in writing about broader societal problems. 

Invited speakers Angela Garcia (Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University), Antonia Hylton (NBC News and MSNBC), Reuben Jonathan Miller (Associate Professor, Crown Family School and the Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity, University of Chicago), and the CTP co-director Laurence Ralph (William D. Zabel ’58 Professor of Human Rights; Professor of Anthropology and Public Affairs, Princeton University) each discussed how their work was interwoven with their family histories and intimate encounters with structural injustices, and the roles that their personal narratives played in illuminating the core issues of their book, such as environmental crisis (Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains), incarceration (Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration), addiction (The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City’s Anexos), mental health (Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum), and urban violence (Sito: An American Teenager and the City that Failed Him). Each speaker then shared a short excerpt from their book. 

The moderated discussion then explored topics such as the challenges of writing about personal stories within broader social issues, how personal narratives can change public perceptions or policy, and ethical considerations in blending the personal with the analytical. The roundtable discussion was followed by a reception and a book signing session in which participants of the event had an opportunity to engage in conversations with the speakers.