Nina Eliasoph

Nina Eliasoph is Professor of Sociology at USC and the 2025–2026 Dornsife-EHESS professeure invitée at the EHESS, in residence May 2026. Professor Eliasoph’s research examines civic and political organizations in a diverse society, ranging from grassroots civic associations and activist groups, to nonprofits and NGOs. Her first book, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life (Cambridge University Press, 1998), describes how participants of various small civic groups talked–or did not talk–about politics, both within their groups and in their encounters with government, media and corporate authorities. Making Volunteers: Civic Life After Welfare’s End (Princeton University Press, 2011) portrays and theorizes a newly prevalent kind of organizational form that aims to cultivate the grassroots from the top down: “empowerment projects.” The Politics of Volunteering (Polity Books, 2013) compares volunteering and political activism, and aims to put these kinds of organizations in a broader historical and comparative perspective. She also helped launch a new major at USC: NGOs and Social Change.

Header image: “Le Plus Grand Reseau du Monde,” Lucien Boucher,
Air France, 1964, David Rumsey Map Center