Ryan Steel is a sociologist and passionate educator whose work focuses on the relationships between bodies, institutions, and governance, with a particular interest in drugs, drug laws, the intersections of medicine and criminal justice, and questions of power and governance.

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His dissertation research took an in-depth case study into Minnesota's medical cannabis program, which is one of the most restrictive in the US, in order to understand how boundaries between medicine and criminal justice are negotiated, how medical authority is structured in practice, and how cannabis using bodies are governed in their everyday lives.

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Ryan has a breadth of theoretical knowledge, and is actively bringing the new materialist theories of Deleuze & Guattari into conversation with Foucault, Dorothy Smith, and theories of the body/embodiment in his current scholarship. 

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With an interdisciplinary background and mixed methods training and experience, Ryan draws on both qualitative and quantitative methods in his work and teaching. Prior to graduate school, Ryan worked as a Research Associate II at the Amherst H. Wilder's Research Department, conducting program evaluations, community needs assessments, and program development research projects for public and nonprofit organizations in the Twin Cities (MN). He has taken graduate level coursework in community-based participatory research methods, and has conducted several such projects.

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Ryan is a passionate and award-winning educator. With experience teaching at both a large R1 University and a Select Liberal Arts College, Ryan has had enthusiastic success with students in all settings and topics.