Max Lubell

PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology

Max Lubell is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include (sub)urban sociology, crime and law, race and ethnicity, and technology and society. He examines how ordinary residents engage in efforts to reduce crime, address neighborhood disorder, and build community cohesion across a range of neighborhood contexts. His research uses qualitative and quantitative methods that draw on interview data, participant observations, and spatial analysis.

Max’s research is supported by the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy dissertation grant, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and the BRIDGS Emergent Scholar Fellowship. He is also the recipient of the 2025 ASA Community and Urban Sociology Section’s graduate student paper award.

His dissertation investigates how neighborhood-based digital platforms are folded into community life in suburban areas. The project pairs quantitative analysis of suburbs across the United States with in-depth fieldwork in a racially diverse suburb of Central Texas. It contributes to a growing area of research on the role of digital technology in the social organization of neighborhood life. In another line of work, he examines how community violence interventions build trust with young people living in neighborhoods shaped by historical inequities in policing and economic disinvestment.

Max is also a volunteer with the Texas Prison Education Initiative, where he helps bring college courses to incarcerated adults. Prior to graduate school, he was a research manager at the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, where he managed mixed-methods research projects and randomized evaluations of youth violence interventions.

Header Image: "Housing, Improved: Great Britain, England. Hampstead. Garden Suburb (Copartnership and Private) Plans of Estate and Cottages: Hampstead Garden Suburb: Asmun's Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb. (Unidentified Artist), 3.2002.1739.2," Harvard Art Museums collections online, Apr 28, 2026, https://hvrd.art/o/17163.