Selina Gallo-Cruz
Associate Professor, Sociology Department
O’Hanley Faculty Scholar
Research Co-Director, Advocacy and Activism
Senior Research Associate, Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration
Research Affiliate, Program on Latin America and the Caribbean
Affiliate, Women’s and Gender Studies
Courses
- 2026 Spring
- PAI 601 Fundamentals of Conflict Studies
- SOC 600 Selected Topics - Fundamentals of Conflict Studi
- SOC 300 Selected Topics - Sexual Inequality, Violence &
- 2025 Fall
- SOC 800 Selected Topics - Sociology of Violence
- SOC 406 Sociological Theory
- 2025 Summer
- SOS 600 Selected Topics - Nonviolence: Princ & Practice
- SOC/WGS 305 Sociology of Sex and Gender
- 2024 Fall
- SOC 800 Selected Topics - Social Movements & Social Chan
- SOC/WGS 305 Sociology of Sex and Gender
- 2024 Summer
- SOS 600 Selected Topics - Nonviolence: Principles & Practice
- SOC/WGS 305 Sociology of Sex and Gender
Highest degree earned
Bio
Selina Gallo-Cruz is associate professor of sociology. She researches culture, conflict, gender, global change, NGOs, nonviolence, social movements and theory. She is author of “Political Invisibility and Mobilization: Women Against State Violence (Routledge, 2021), winner of the American Sociological Association’s Peace, War and Social Conflict section’s Outstanding Book Award.
Prior to joining Syracuse, she served as an associate professor and assistant professor for the College of the Holy Cross and a visiting assistant professor at Emory University. In 2021, she was named a Fulbright-Tampere University Scholar and served as a Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center, and at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
She received a Ph.D. from Emory University in 2012.
Research Grant Awards and Projects
"Mellon Scholarship in Action Grant, "Community in the Classroom: A Living Curriculum in Grassroots Civics"",
"Climate Resiliency Teaching Fellowship", Sponsored by Shelburne Farms, Castleton University.
"Mellon Scholarship in Action Grant, "Community in the Classroom: A Living Curriculum in Grassroots Civics"",
"Batchelor Ford Faculty Research Fellowship, “A Method for All Humankind”", Sponsored by College of the Holy Cross.
"European Sociological Research Network on Social Movements Travel Grant",
Selected Publications
- Books
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., Feminism, Violence, and Nonviolence: An Anthology. Edinburgh University Press, 2024.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Have Repertoire, Will Travel: Nonviolence as Global Contentious Performance." In Elements in Contentious Politics Series. Cambridge University Press, 2024.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., Political Invisibility and Mobilization: Women against State Violence in Argentina, Yugoslavia, and Liberia. Routledge, 2021.
- Journal Articles
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Dressed in Nylon Lunares: On the work of Maria Mies, the interconnected fibers of women’s lives, and ecofeminist mothering." Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Special Issue: “Land and Life: Ecosocialist-Ecofemnist Responses to Capitalist Extractivism”, 2025.
- Laine, M., Gallo-Cruz, S. R. and Leino, H., "Saving the “lungs of the city”: emerging civic action in urban environmental policy: case studies from Tampere, Finland and Worcester, Massachusetts." Local Environment, 2025.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., Morton, C. R., "On Continuity and Exceptionality in Our Present Crises: A Conversation with Silvia Federici." Capitalism, Nature, Socialism , 2024.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Policy for People with the Fewest Choices: Ontology and Actorhood for Sex Trade Abolition." Sociologists Speak Out: How the Discipline Can Help People Better Understand (or Solve) Current Social Events, Social Problems, Structural Inequality, or Issues of Social Justice, Special Section of Sociological Forum, 2023.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Peace Studies and the Limits to Growth." The Journal of Social Encounters, Special Issue: Extractive Politics, Conflict, and Peacebuilding, 2023.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Awaiting Spring and War: Insights from Ecofeminism." Deportate, esuli, profughe, Special issue on the war in Ukraine, 2022.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Marginalization and Mobilizing Power in Nonviolent Social Movements." Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change, 2021.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., Remsberg, R., "Peacebuilding, Liberian Women, and the Invisible Hand of Conflict in the Postwar Era." Pagnucco, R. J. (ed.) The Journal of Social Encounters, Special Issue: Women and Peacebuilding, 2021.
- Book Chapters
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Ontology, Biology, and Care: Ecofeminist Perspectives on Social Justice." In Overcoming the Inequalities of Green Transition. Lukšič, A. A., Jovanovska, S. and Remic, B. (eds.) ČZK Zbornik Rumena, 2024.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Circles of Threat and Spheres of Power: Reflections on Women’s Nonviolent Activism." In Women and Nonviolence in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Hamling, A. (ed.) Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "American Mothers of Nonviolence: Action and the Politics of Erasure in Women's Nonviolent Activism." In 100 Years of the Nineteenth Amendment: An Appraisal of Women's Political Activism. McCammon, H. J., Banaszak, L. (eds.) Oxford University Press, 2018.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Cleansing Our Hands of the Dirty War: The Colombian Domestication of Human Rights." In National Policy Making: Domestication of Global Trends. Alasuutari, P., Qadir, A. (eds.) Routledge, 2013.
- Blogs
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Should We Compare the Violence of Rape, War, Racism, and Ecocide? Pacifist Feminists Have Long Argued We Must." In Edinburgh University Press blog. , 2024.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "The Long and Complex Story of Global Nonviolence." In Conflict(ed), blog of the Peace, War, and Conflict section. American Sociological Association, 2024.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Is there a strategic advantage to political invisibility?." In Conflict(ed). , 2021.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Women, peace, and development: lessons from post-war Liberia." In GlobalDev blog. , 2021.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "The PR industry aims to demobilize environmental movements—here’s what organizers can do about it." In Waging Nonviolence. , 2021.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Do We Have a New Women’s Movement?." In Mobilizing Ideas. , 2018.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Creating Space for Women in India’s Ekta Parishad." In Waging Nonviolence: People-powered News and Analysis. , 2014.
- Book Reviews
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Book Review of "The Stigma Matrix: Gender, Globalization, and the Agency of Pakistan’s Frontline Women," Fauzia Husain." In American Journal of Sociology. , 2025.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Book Review of "After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda," Nicole Fox." In The Journal of Social Encounters. , 2024.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Book Review of "Catholic Peacebuilding and Mining: Integral Pease, Development, and Ecology," Caesar A. Montevecchio and Gerald F. and Powers (Eds.)." In The Journal of Social Encounters. , 2023.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Book Review of "Fighting Better: Constructive Conflicts in America," Louis Kriesberg." In The Journal of Social Encounters. , 2023.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Book Review of "Catholic Peacebuilding and Mining: Integral Pease, Development, and Ecology," Caesar A. Montevecchio and Gerald F. and Powers (Eds.)." In Peace Chronicle. , 2022.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "On Obedience and Outcome, ¡Presente! Nonviolent Politics and the Resurrection of the Dead by Kyle Lambelet." In Symposium Commentary for Syndicate. , 2021.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Book Review of "Palestinian Women’s Activism: Nationalism, Secularism, Islamism," Iṣlāḥ Jād, 2018, Syracuse University Press." In Humanity and Society. , 2020.
- Edited Special Issues
- Isla, A., Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Land and Life: Ecosocialist-Ecofeminist Responses to Capitalist Extractivism." In Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. , 2025.
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Extractive Politics, Conflict, and Peacebuilding." In The Journal of Social Encounters. , 2023.
- Editorials
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "On Othering and Working Together: A Reflection on Our Work in PWSC." In American Sociological Association, Peace, War and Social Conflict Section. , 2025.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Rethinking Civics (Dis)Empowerment in Our Schools." In Critical Mass Bulletin. , 2020.
- Encyclopedia Entries
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Nonviolence." In Encyclopedia of Political Sociology. Grasso, M., Giugno, M. (eds.) Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Violent and Nonviolent Conflict." In Encyclopedia of Violence-Peace-Conflict. Kurtz, . (ed.) Elsevier, 2022.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Nonviolent Civil Disobedience." In The Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice. Thompson, S. (ed.) Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Global Nonviolence." In The Encyclopedia of Globalization. Ritzer, G. (ed.) Wiley Blackwell, 2011.
- Boli, J., Gallo-Cruz, S. and Mathias, M., "World Polity Theory." In The International Studies Compendium Project. Denemark, R. A. (ed.) Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Midwifery and Medicalization." In Battleground Families: Encyclopedia of Current Controversies in Families. Brackett, K. P. (ed.) Greenwood Publishing Group, 2009.
- Film Reviews
- Gallo-Cruz, S. R., "Film Review of "Reassessing the (Still) Angry (but Savvy) Strategic Crowd: A Review of Street Rebellion: Resistance beyond Violence and Nonviolence," Ben Case." In Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest. , 2024.
- Gallo-Cruz, S., "Films at the Fault Line of ‘Deep’ and ‘Bright’ Greens in the Environmental Movement." In International Sociology Reviews. , 2021.
Presentations and Events
Syracuse University Project Advance High School Sociology Teacher Training, "Subjects, Objects and Social Relationships: Teaching Personhood and Agency" (December 15, 2025)
Syracuse University Project Advance Teacher Training, "Visibility, Invisibility and Violence: A Sociological Approach" (December 15, 2025)
Syracuse University Project Advance High School Sociology Teacher Training, "Subjects, Objects and Social Relationships: Teaching Personhood and Agency" (December 11, 2025)
Syracuse University Project Advance Teacher Training, "Visibility, Invisibility and Violence: A Sociological Approach" (December 11, 2025)
XV Covegno di Sociologia dell’ Ambienta Torino, "On the Complex Pathways from Cognitive Understandings of Ecological Overshoot to Pragmatic Responses" (September, 2025)
Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Education Series, "What I Have Learned From my College Students Teaching on the Sex Trade" (May 27, 2025)
Talk with Jean Beamann, PhD, Syracuse University, Sociology Department, "Suspect Citizenship: Activism against State Violence in France" (April 9, 2025)
"What I Have Learned From my College Students Teaching on the Sex Trade" (March 28, 2025)
Talk with Manual Vallee, PhD, Syracuse University, Program for the Advancement of Research in Conflict and Collaboration, "Managing Public resistance to Pesticides through Ignorance Production: New Zealand’s 2002-2004 Urban Pesticide Spraying Operation Against the Painted Apple Moth" (January 22, 2025)
Power 2-25: Hierarchy, Action, and Power in Question, "Political Invisibility and Power: The Sex Trade’s Hidden Figures and the Power of Policy Exclusion" (January 9, 2025 - January 12, 2025)
National Association for Women’s Studies Annual Meeting, "The Safety to See Oppression: Liberatory Consciousness After the Sex Trade" (November 14, 2024 - November 17, 2024)
Peace and Justice Studies Association Annual Meeting, Niagara University, "Feminist Responses to and Engagements with Nonviolence: From Rape to Ecocide" (October 24, 2024 - October 27, 2024)
Gallo-Cruz, S. R., Laine , M., Laino, H., ASA Roundtable, Urban Sociology, "Saving the Lungs of the City: emerging civic action in urban environmental policy" (August 12, 2024)
American Sociological Association Pavilion talk on Sections and Communities, "Opportunities and Contributions of the Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section" (August 11, 2024)
American Sociological Association Department Leaders Preconference, “Navigating Conflict as a Sociology Department Leader”, "Framing Conflicts as Opportunities for Growth" (August 9, 2024)
The 10th World Conference on Women’s Studies, "Feminism, Nonviolence and Rape Resistance" (May 30, 2024)
Peace, War and Conflict Section of the American Sociological Association Virtual Coffee Talk series, "Academic Trajectories in Peace and Conflict Research" (May 21, 2024)
Talk with Anjuli Fahlberg, PhD, Syracuse University, Program for the Advancement of Research in Conflict and Collaboration, "Nonviolent Organizing in the Midst of Repression: Learning from Activism in Rio de Janeiro’s Gang Territories" (April 10, 2024)
Moynihan Institute for Global Affairs, Syracuse University, "The Successes, Failures, and Long Story of the Globalization of Nonviolence" (April 5, 2024)
Program on Conflict and Collaboration, Syracuse University, "From Rape to Ecocide: Feminists Respond to Nonviolence" (March 27, 2024)
Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting, "Forbidden Solutions and Forsaken Oversights: Culture and Denial in Climate Policy" (March 3, 2024)
Sociologists for Women in Society Winter Meeting, "Prostitution Policy and Possibilities for Personhood: The Debate over Full or Partial Decriminalization" (January 27, 2024)
Talk with Melanie Thompson, Coalition against Trafficking in Women, Ryann Whitaker, Safe Exit Initiative, Mary Speta, Amirah, Inc., and Audrey Morrissey, My Life, My Choice, Syracuse University, "Policy for Women in the Sex Trade: A Human Trafficking Awareness Month Panel" (January 22, 2024)
4S Conference, "Repudiated Knowledge of Ecological Decline: Parameters and Social Dynamics of Unknowing" (November 9, 2023)
International Summer School of Political Ecology, University of Ljubljana, "Ecofeminist Responses to Social Justice" (August 22, 2023)
Roundtable Presentation, American Sociological Association Section on Community and Urban Sociology, "Protest, Public Relations, and Policy Paradoxes in City Sustainability Planning" (August 18, 2023)
The 31st Annual Africa and Diaspora International Conference, California State University, "Peace Studies and the Limits to Growth" (April 27, 2023 - April 29, 2023)
Center for Teaching and Learning, California State University, "Visibility and Violence, Crime and Culpability: Insights from Women’s Movements" (April 25, 2023)
“No Woman Has Ever Written Enough: Memoir, Visibility, Possibility,” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Meeting, "Rewriting the Script: Memoirs and the Delegitimation of Domestic Violence" (November 10, 2022 - November 13, 2022)
"Different Aspects of Peacebuilding," Conflict Research Society Annual Conference, Queen's University Belfast, "Extractive Politics, Conflict, and Peacebuilding: Institutional and Structural Approaches" (September 7, 2022 - September 9, 2022)
“Uncommon Explorations between Green Technologies, Climate Hopes, and the Anthropological Imagination II,” European Association of Social Anthropologists Annual Meeting, Queen’s University Belfast, "Ontologies of Exclusion: Expert Repudiation over Limits to Growth" (July 26, 2022 - July 29, 2022)
"Governing a sustainable transformation – The role of knowledge, expertise and the reflexivity of public institutions," Nordic Environmental Social Science Conference, "Policy Paradigms and Moral Orders: Sanctioning Governing Critical Research on the Biological Limits of Technological Solutions to Climate Change" (June 7, 2022 - June 9, 2022)
Gallo-Cruz, S., Leino, H., Laine, M., Finnish Urban Studies Conference, "Local Movements and Urban Environmental Policy" (April 28, 2022 - April 29, 2022)
Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, "Cities, Citizenship, and Climate Crisis" (April 28, 2022)
Environmental Policy Research Group, Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, "On Layers of Climate Denial in City Politics" (April 8, 2022)
Sociologists for Women in Society Winter Meeting, "Violence and Resistance" (April 1, 2022)
California State University, "Response to After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda, Book Launch for author Nicole Fox" (March 15, 2022)
"Feminist Responses to Invisibility and Violence" United Nations Committee for the Status of Women Annual Meeting, "Restaging Private Abuse in Public Places: How Survivors Find the Courage to Leave" (March 14, 2022)
Sociology Research Seminar, Tampere University, "Sustainability and Disenchantment: Ceremony and Circumstance in Climate Policy and Practice" (March 8, 2022)
Las Casas Institute, University of Oxford, "Response to Catholic Peacebuilding and Mining: Integral Peace, Development and Ecology, Book Launch for Caesar A. Montevecchio and Gerald F. Powers" (March 1, 2022)
Development Days Conference, University of Helsinki, "Policy Paradigms and Moral Orders: Sanctioning Governing Critical Research on the Biological Limits of Technological Solutions to Climate Change" (February 17, 2022)
Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Public Policy, "Invisibility and Violence: From Women in War to Everyday Extraction" (February 4, 2022)
Sustainable Transformations in Urban Environments Program, Tampere University, "Social Movements and City Sustainability Politics: Insights from Worcester, Massachusetts" (January 17, 2022)
Tampere Peace Research Institute, "A Gendered Approach to Conflict and Peace: (In)visibility, Threat, and Power" (December 14, 2021)
Sustainable Transformation of Urban Environments, Tampere University, "The Future of Social Policy" (November 22, 2021)
International Studies Association Northeast Conference, The Politics and Practice of Social Movements, "A Method for All Humankind? Global Nonviolence as Cultural and Moral Order" (November 6, 2021)
The Great American Outdoors Panel at Fulbright Finland, Turku University, "Ecology and Environment: Lessons Learned" (October 8, 2021)
Globalization Seminar, Global and Transnational Sociology Master’s Degree Program, Tampere University, "Global Movements in World Society" (September 20, 2021)
European Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Climate Movements: Developments and Challenges, "On Conversion and Cooptation in Climate Movement: An Ethnographic Perspective" (September 1, 2021)
American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Peace, War, and Social Conflicts Regular Panel, "Peacebuilding, Liberian Women, and the Invisible Hand of Conflict in the Postwar Era" (August 9, 2021)
Alternative Futures and Popular protest, University of Manchester, "The Lies Lie Somewhere in the Middle: On Climate Denial in City Sustainability Politics" (June 7, 2021)
Introduction to Peace Studies, Wellesley College, "Political Invisibility and Mobilization: Women against State Violence in Argentina, Yugoslavia, and Liberia" (May 14, 2021)
Gallo-Cruz, S., Remsberg, R., Sociologists for Women in Society Delegation to 65th Annual Meeting of the Committee for the Status of Women, United Nations, "How They See Us, How We See Ourselves, and How We See Peace: Liberian Women, the International Community, and Peacebuilding After War" (March 20, 2021)
Gallo-Cruz, S., Heidemann, ., Gawerc, M., Leitz, L., Virtual Coffee Hour Conversation, Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section of the American Sociological Association, "Teaching Peace in Troubled Times" (March 8, 2021)
Gallo-Cruz, S., Remsberg, ., Sociologists for Women in Society Winter Meeting, Narratives, Meaning and Social Change, "How They See Us, How We See Ourselves, and How We See Peace: Liberian Women, the International Community, and Peacebuilding After War" (January 28, 2021)
Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, "Book Launch: Political Invisibility and Mobilization: Women against State Violence in Argentina, Yugoslavia, and Liberia" (January 25, 2021)
Honors and Accolades
O'Hanley Family Faculty Scholar, Syracuse University (2024 - 2027)
Democracy Visiting Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School (2021 - 2022)
Fulbright-Tampere University Scholar Award (2021 - 2022)
Outstanding Book Award, American Sociological Association Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section (2021)
Curricular Development, Montserrat Seminar, Center for Teaching, College of the Holy Cross (2016 - 2017)