Michael Ralph teaches in the School of Medicine at New York University. His research examines the monetary value of human life through a sustained focus on forensics, debt, slavery, insurance, actuarial science, algorithms, and incarceration. Michael is the recipient of fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, as well as Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in US History and W.E.B. Dubois Fellowship.
Michael’s 2015 book Forensics of Capital demonstrates that the social profile of an individual or country is a credit profile as well as a forensic profile. Apart from writing, directing, and producing the forthcoming short animated film, Fishing– about how ingenuity cannot be incarcerated–Michael is now completing two additional books. Life explores the relationship between the history of actuarial science, slavery, life insurance, and other techniques for determining how much someone’s life is worth. Before 13th revises the scholarly consensus about private prison labor, or convict leasing, showing that it did not begin with the 13th amendment but several decades prior.
During the 2021-2022 academic year, Michael will be teaching a graduate seminar that examines how forms of social difference (including race, sexuality, race, gender, age, ability, education, expertise, and national origin) shape access to capital as well as how people are governed. He will also be collaborating in the Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Currency and Empire.”