Profile
Mike Owen Benediktsson is an urban and cultural sociologist who joined Hunter College in 2011 after completing his PhD in Sociology at Princeton University.
Benediktsson's research focuses on the role of material objects in social life. Recent and ongoing projects have covered a wide range of urban settings and social contexts, from vacant homes and divided highways in the New Jersey suburbs, to smartphones and turnstiles in the New York City subway system. A mixed-method researcher, Benediktsson has published articles in City & Community, Urban Geography, Sociological Forum, Social Forces, and Symbolic Interaction, among other publications. He is currently working on a book manuscript that investigates the social life of six objects commonly found in and around New York City.The common denominator in his work is the capacity of material objects to reflect, reproduce, or change normative conceptions of human behavior.
Benediktsson teaches in the sociology department at Hunter, the Graduate Applied Digital Sociology (ADS) program, and Macaulay Honors College. In addition to Urban Sociology, he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the sociology of old and new media, and occasionally teaches contemporary social theory. At Macaulay, he coordinates The Peopling of New York City, one of the four City Seminars. From 2013 to 2015, Benediktsson organized the Digital Communities, Digital Media workshop, a faculty research seminar hosted by the sociology department at Hunter. He seeks to involve his undergraduate and graduate students in his research whenever possible. Read more about Benediktsson's research and teaching on his website.
When he’s not at Hunter, Benediktsson can be found on the soccer fields of central Brooklyn or in a trout stream in the Catskills. He lives in Flatbush with his wife and two kids.