Erin E. O’Connor is a sociologist and world-recognized expert in craft studies. A lifelong maker and writer, she is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Politics and Human Rights at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. Her research specializes in glass, the arts, culture, knowledge, materiality, the body, the environment, and ethnography. In 2023, she received a Rakow Grant for Glass Research from the Corning Museum of Glass. This award launched her current book project, The Middle Mineral & the Mine: an Ethnogeology of Studio Glass. Her first book, Fire Craft: Art, Body, and World among Glassblowers (August 2025, Columbia University Press), is a sensuous auto-ethnography of becoming a studio glassblower. From the furnaces of empire to the hot bodies of collaboration and love, Fire Craft interweaves theory and practice to explain the glassblower's commitment to the art of making despite the risk of breaking.
Raised in a family of artists and entrepreneurs, Dr. O’Connor offers interdisciplinary courses in the Departments of Art, Environmental Studies, and Politics & Human Rights. She is a Faculty Liaison to the college’s prison education programs.
