About Dean Hall
Dean Thomas Hall is a sociologist whose work examines power, recognition, nationalism, inequality, and the social consequences of emerging technologies. He earned his M.A. in Sociology from San Diego State University, where his thesis developed the concept of American Sacred Nationalism to examine the historical and cultural processes through which nationalism, religion, and social hierarchy become mutually reinforcing. His current research extends this work into questions of recognition, human–AI collaboration, and the possibility of emergent sociality in artificial intelligence. Hall is a 2026–2027 San Diego and Imperial Counties Community College Association Regional Fellow at Palomar College and has taught sociology at San Diego State University. His scholarship is informed by his experience as a formerly incarcerated scholar and by a commitment to understanding how institutions produce exclusion, whose knowledge is recognized, and how those processes might be transformed.