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Mallory Elizabeth SoRelle

Tony & Teddie Brown Associate Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy
Sanford School of Public Policy
Box 90245, Durham, NC 27708
210 Sanford Building, Box 90245, Durham, NC 27708

Overview


Mallory SoRelle is an Associate Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Her research and teaching explore how public policies are produced by, and critically how they reproduce, socioeconomic and political inequality in the United States. She focuses primarily on issues like consumer financial protection and access to civil justice that fundamentally shape the welfare of marginalized communities yet are often overlooked by scholars of the welfare state because they are not traditional redistributive programs.

Mallory is the author of Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection (University of Chicago Press, 2020), which explores the political response—by policymakers, public interest groups, and ordinary Americans—to one of the most consequential economic policy issues in the United States: consumer credit and financial regulation.

Current Duke Appointments & Affiliations


Tony & Teddie Brown Associate Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy · 2025 - Present Sanford School of Public Policy
Associate Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy · 2025 - Present Sanford School of Public Policy

Recent News Items


Published October 3, 2023
SCOTUS Challenge Threatens Future of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Published October 31, 2020
November Books: Mallory SoRelle "Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection"
Published August 25, 2020
A Decade After the 2008 Crash, the US Still Lacks Protections Against Predatory Lending

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Recent Scholarly Works


The racial politics of student debt relief policy

Journal article Politics, Groups, and Identities · May 6, 2026 Full text Cite

Election Administration and Voting Behavior among Americans of Color

Journal article Journal of Race Ethnicity and Politics · January 1, 2026 Several U.S. states expanded vote-by-mail in 2020, while other states made no changes. This uneven expansion occurred in a highly racialized policy context. We explore how the United States’ history of race-based disenfranchisement, racialized elite rhetor ... Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


CAREER: The Emerging Political Economy of FringeTech Financial Services

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2024 - 2029

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Education


Cornell University · 2016 Ph.D.
Cornell University · 2014 M.A.
Harvard University · 2010 M.P.P.
Smith College · 2006 B.A.

External Links


Personal Website