Senior Lecturing Fellow

In addition to teaching Sexuality and the Law at Duke Law during the spring 2013 semester, Dr. Kevin Sobel-Read is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. In this dual role, he is interested not only in the law per se but also in the social ideologies that the law both constructs and disrupts.  His ongoing research, combining the critical insights of law and anthropology, examines relationships between capital flows, sovereignty, and globalization.  He is particularly interested in national (including tribal/aboriginal) law as the link between local legal action, whether judicial or regulatory, and global phenomena, ranging from nationalist sentiment to the global marketplace.  His work purposefully bridges the continuum between the tangible practices of on-the-ground legal transactions and the complex theories of global commerce and community. 

Sobel-Read received his B.A., summa cum laude, in anthropology-linguistics from New York University in 1999 and his J.D. from New York University in 2002. In 2012 he earned his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, with a sub-specialty in legal anthropology, at Duke University, where he was a James B. Duke Fellow.

Sobel-Read is also associated with Ellis & Winters in Raleigh, where he has practiced civil litigation.  He has experience in the areas of breach of contract, intellectual property, antitrust, employment, tort, and American Indian Law. Prior to joining Ellis & Winters, Sobel-Read practiced at Morrison & Foerster in New York.