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Pamela J. Prickett, PhD

I am a writer and scholar with broad research interests and an enduring love for Los Angeles. I've published on urban poverty, Islam, gender, mental health, and death/dying. Across these diverse topics, I'm driven by an intellectual and moral hunger to understand a perennial social conflict: our quest for individualism and need for community. Currently, I am an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. I earned my PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

My first book, Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels (2021, University of Chicago Press), draws on more than six years inside an African American-led mosque in South Central Los Angeles. I examine what believers do together within an Islamic framework to combat poverty, joblessness, violence, and racial injustice. At its core, the book is about the meaning of religious community. The book has been reviewed in Social Forces, Sociology of Religion, and Reading Religion, and featured on the New Books in Islamic Studies podcast. Findings from this project also appear in Social Problems, Gender & Society, City & Community, and other academic journals.

My next book is a deep investigation of the lives of the unclaimed dead in Los Angeles, their families, the workers charged with tending their bodies, and the strangers who show up to mourn them. It aims to spark a national conversation about where we’re headed as a society, and what we owe each other in life and in death. The book is coauthored with Stefan Timmermans (UCLA) and will be published with Crown. We also have an article forthcoming in American Sociological Review.

Before academia, I worked as a journalist and media professional. I remain committed to connecting my research to wider audiences. Here are some recent examples on the unclaimed dead in Los Angeles (cited in the NYT), unclaimable bodies of the US-Mexico border, and qualitative research in an era of Trump politics. I also co-host a podcast called Religion Unmuted. According to Feedspot, Religion Unmuted is one of the "Top 35 Religious Podcasts You Must Follow in 2021."