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Michele Statz is an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She is affiliated faculty with the University of Minnesota Law School and the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center and is also an Affiliated Scholar with the American Bar Foundation. Michele is trained as an anthropologist of law and is a leading researcher in rural and Indigenous access to justice. Her work has appeared in Law & Society Review, Harvard Law & Policy Review, and the American Journal of Public Health, among others. It is generously funded by the National Science Foundation. Michele is the co-founder of the Law and Rurality Collaborative Research Network, and she is a member of the Federal-level Rural Justice Task Force and the National Advisory Council for Frontline Justice.
Michele’s other ongoing work includes interdisciplinary and mixed-media projects on global youth and mobility (www.youthcirculations.com); reproductive justice; working-class identity; rural housing precarity; and immigration lawyering. Her first book, Lawyering an Uncertain Cause: Immigration Advocacy and Chinese Youth in the U.S. (Vanderbilt U Press), was published in 2018. Statz holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and a graduate certificate in Comparative Law and Society Studies from the University of Washington.
PhD, University of Washington
Major: Sociocultural Anthropology
Minor: Graduate Certificate in Comparative Law and Society Studies
MA, University of Washington
Major: Sociocultural Anthropology
BS, Summa cum laude, Loyola University
Major: Anthropology
Minor: Concentrations in International Studies and Asian Studies
Pruitt, L. R., Kool, A. L., Lucas, L. S., Statz, M., Conway, D. M., Haksgaard, H., 2018. Legal Deserts: A Multi-state Perspective on Rural Access to Justice. Harvard Law and Policy Review, 13 (1): 15-156.
Statz, M., 2018. Transnational migration and the construction of vulnerability. Routledge, Routledge handbook on ethics and international relations New York, .
Statz, M., 2018. Lawyering an Uncertain Cause. Immigration Advocacy and Chinese Youth in the U.S.. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, TN, .
Honorable Mention, Graduate Research Fellowship Program, National Science Foundation, 2010
Statz, M. L. "Poverty, justice, and lived expertise across the rural northland", Rural Poverty Fifty Years After The People Left Behind Conference, Washington, District of Columbia. January 01, 2018.
Statz, M. L. "Civil legal aid as a component of rural health equity", Minnesota Rural Health Conference, Duluth, Minnesota. January 01, 2018.
Statz, M. L. "Minnesota Public Radio community gathering", Grand Rapids, Minnesota. January 01, 2018.
Statz, M. L. "Best interests of unaccompanied children: Immigration policy in a global context", Migration Across Global Regimes of Childhood Symposium, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. January 01, 2018.
Statz, M. L. "A spatial reading of Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt: Recognizing the tyranny of distance", American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts. January 01, 2017.
Statz, M. L. "Identity and experience across the rural lawscape", Rural Sociological Society Annual Meeting, Columbus, Ohio. January 01, 2017.
Statz, M. L. "Northland Access to Justice: A Wisconsin Overview", Wisconsin State Bar Association Meeting, Wisconsin State Bar Association, Madison, Wisconsin. January 01, 2017.
Statz, M. L. "Seasonal work, seasonal lives: Migrant housing precarity in the rural West", Rural West Conference, Stanford University, Missoula, Montana. January 01, 2016.
Statz, M. L. "Chinese difference and deservedness: The paper lives of immigration law", Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities (ASLCH) Conference, Hartford, Connecticut. January 01, 2016.
Statz, M. L. "What we talk about when we don't talk about care: Immigrant advocacy efforts in rural America", Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota. January 01, 2016.
Statz, M. L. "Interdisciplinary perspectives on activism and advocating for vulnerable immigrants", Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Seattle, Washington. January 01, 2015.
Statz, M. L. "Parenting global youth: Contestations of debt and belonging", Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, Colorado. January 01, 2015.
Statz, M. L. "Labor, legality and everyday life: Global youth in rural America", Rural West Conference, Stanford University, Portland, Oregon. January 01, 2015.
Statz, M. L. "Paper lives: The Chinese family of immigration law", Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota. January 01, 2014.
Statz, M. L. "'And you can do that in the South, if you use your insider status carefully': Cause lawyering in new immigrant destinations", Rural Sociological Society Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana. January 01, 2014.
Statz, M. L. "Chinese difference and deservedness: The paper lives of immigration law", ClassCrits VII-Povery, Precarity, and Work: Struggle and Solidarity in an Era of Permanent Crisis, UC Davis School of Law, Davis, California. January 01, 2014.
Statz, M. L. "The cause, and costs, of legal advocacy: Lawyering on behalf of unaccompanied Chinese youth", Annual Meeting of the American Ethnological Society and Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, Chicago, Illinois. January 01, 2013.
Statz, M. L. "Strategic obligation: Cause lawyering on behalf of unaccompanied Chinese youth", Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Boston, Massachusetts. January 01, 2013.
Statz, M. L. "Illegality, youth and belonging", Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts. January 01, 2013.
Statz, M. L. "Unaccompanied migrant youth in new destinations", Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society, Minneapolis, Minnesota. January 01, 2012.
Statz, M. L. "The legal lives and labor of unaccompanied youth in rural new destinations", Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, Chicago, Illinois. January 01, 2012.
Statz, M. L. "Questioning the long-term 'success' of legal relief: Cause lawyering and unaccompanied Chinese youth", Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, California. January 01, 2012.
Statz, M. L. "New cultural spaces in China studies", Northwest Graduate Student Conference on Transitions and Growth in China, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. January 01, 2011.
Statz, M. L. "Culture, age, and the anthropologist in legal representation", Annual Law and Society Association Meeting, San Francisco, California. January 01, 2011.
Statz, M. L. "Limited relief: The uses of culture, age, and the anthropologist in legal representation for unaccompanied Fujianese youth", Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Seattle, Washington. January 01, 2011.
Rural Sociological Society
American Association of Geographers
Law and Society Association
American Anthropological Association