Student Profile: Margaret (Maggie) Woodruff
Maggie's Profile
Email address: woodruff@uci.edu
Dual/concurrent degree you received: J.D. 2021 / Ph.D. in Anthropology 2025
Research interests/agenda: My dissertation, They Must Be Somewhere: Categories, Containment, and Los Angeles Homeless Counts, traced how a federal grant’s data reporting requirements become meaningful through the forms, encounters, reports, and legal claims those requirements beget. Building on scholarship about homelessness policy, knowledge production methods, and affective space, the dissertation explored how different scales and geographies of governance influence the collaborative categorization of difference. My methods relied on participant observation, interviews, and archival analysis of annual Los Angeles and Long Beach homeless counts. I observed that the state-led process of visually identifying, naming, and categorizing homelessness enlists count collaborators to transform people into transgressive bodies with differentiated value.
My research plans are to publish this work, and to pursue my related interests in legal clinic practice, counter-surveillance tactics, and gender-expansive athletes. I also plan to return to the university setting as a professor. In the interim, I continue to build my legal career as a housing advocate serving low-income clients. I maintain the long-term agenda of using each degree to inform the other in theory and practice. Through engaged research with an eye towards practical policy, I hope to bring grounded interdisciplinary solutions to modern issues.
Past Education: B.A., Cultural Anthropology, Rutgers University, Magna Cum Laude 2017. Criminology minor.
Academic Experiences, Honors and Awards:
Graduate Student and Early Career Workshop, Law and Society Association 2022
Legacy Award (chosen by peers), UCI Law 2021
Law, Society, and Culture Emphasis, UCI 2020
Grants:
Graduate Division, UC Irvine, Public Impact Fellowship, Fall 2024
National Science Foundation, Law and Science Dissertation Grant, Fall 2023
Wenner-Gren Foundation, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, Fall 2023
Anthropology Department, UC Irvine, Chair’s Research Fellowship, June 2023
Center for Medical Humanities, UC Irvine, Graduate Research Fellowship, June 2023
Presentations, Publications, Speaking Engagements:
Woodruff, Maggie. “Book Review: The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and Intrusion by Iván Chaar López.” H-Net Reviews, H-Environment, January 2025.
Woodruff, Maggie, and Brooke A. Weitzman. “Orange County, Homelessness, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Confluence of Disasters.” Orange County Lawyer Magazine, October 2020: 36-39.
Law and Society Association
Annual Meeting on Law & Society in Chicago, USA, May 2025
Presented draft dissertation, “They Must Be Somewhere: Categories and Collaboration of LA Homeless Counts.”
Annual Meeting on Law & Society in San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 2023
Presented draft paper, “Productive Encounters: Bureaucracy, Dispossession, and Discourse of Unhoused LA.”
Graduate Student and Early Career Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, July 2022
Presented and workshopped draft paper, “Ecological Law: Creative Lawyering Amidst an Entrenched Disaster.”
Global Meeting on Law & Society in Lisbon, Portugal, July 2022
Presented paper, “Assessing the Departure: Public Interest Law Students and Legal Education,” and was discussant for a panel on legal education during the pandemic.
Center for Medical Humanities, Irvine, CA
Works in Progress Series, May 2024
Showcased dissertation progress, “Productive Encounters: Bureaucracy, Dispossession, and Discourse of Unhoused LA.”
University of Massachusetts, Amherst Center for Justice, Law, and Societies, Amherst, MA
New Directions in Law and Society Virtual Graduate Student and Junior Scholar Workshop, October 2021
Workshopped draft paper, “Assessing the Departure: Public Interest Law Students and Legal Education.”
University of California, Irvine School of Law, Irvine, CA
Socio-Legal Studies Workshop with UCI Center in Law, Society and Culture, October 2020
Presented and workshopped draft paper, “Ecological Law: Disaster, Shelter, and Advocacy in Orange County.”
University of California, Irvine School of Social Sciences, Irvine, CA
Anthropology in Transit Graduate Conference, February 2019
Presented draft paper, “Revolution Meeting at 9: Student Labor, Corporate Universities, and an Activist Anthropology”
Presentation with Professor Kim Fortun at Newkirk Center for Science and Society, October 2018
“From Disaster Research to Public and Policy Engagement”
Employment/Career Highlights (positions, internships, externships, clerkships):
St. John’s Community Health, Los Angeles, CA
Staff Attorney, Legal Services Program, August 2026 – present
Public Law Center, Santa Ana, CA
Staff Attorney, Eviction Defense Clinic and Housing and Homelessness Prevention Unit, August 2023 – July 2026
Law Office of Carol A. Sobel, Santa Monica, CA
Attorney, September 2022 – August 2023
BioCritical Studies Lab, University of California, Los Angeles, CA
Legal Researcher, December 2021 – August 2023
Elder Law & Disability Rights Center, Santa Ana, CA
Law Clerk, May 2020 – July 2020
University of California, Irvine School of Law, Irvine, CA
Environmental Law Clinic, Certified Law Student, August 2019 – December 2019
Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Regional Counsel, Region 5, Chicago, IL
Legal Extern, May 2019 – July 2019
University of California, Irvine, School of Social Sciences, Irvine, CA
Graduate Teaching Assistant, Fall 2017, Winter 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021