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 at Marymount Manhattan College, now Northeastern University-New York City. Her research specializes in glass and the arts, knowledge and the body, culture and the environment, and ethnography. In 2023, she received a Rakow Grant for Glass Research from the Corning Museum of Glass, which launched her current book project, The Middle Mineral & the Mine: a Geoanthropology of Studio Glass. This forthcoming work examines the entangled agencies of mining, creativity, and geopolitics in studio glass and has earned her recognition as a 2026 Fulbright Finalist.
Her first book, Fire Craft: Art, Body, and World among Glassblowers (August 2025, Columbia University Press), is a sensuous 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.
