Mo Torres

Mo Torres is an assistant professor of public policy and sociology (by courtesy). His research and teaching focus on metropolitan spatial inequality, with special attention to questions of race, class, and jurisdiction. His current book project traces the history of urban fiscal crisis in Michigan, asking how mid-20th-century patterns of suburban development structured the conditions for seemingly perpetual fiscal crisis in post-industrial cities like Detroit, Flint, and smaller cities across the state. Other ongoing projects consider spatial patterns of race-class inequality related to education, banking, and policing. Torres is broadly interested in the political economy of race and racism, and his current work engages questions of race theory, asking how ideas of race are constructed in relation to material class conditions. He holds a PhD and MA in sociology from Harvard University, where he was a Harvard Kennedy School doctoral fellow in Inequality and Social Policy; an MPP from the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy; and a BA in history and Chicana/o Studies from UC Davis. He is also a first-generation college graduate, a former Detroit public school teacher, and a Fulbright scholar.