Sarah K. Bruch is an associate professor in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration and the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2012, and Master of Public Administration from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2005.

Dr. Bruch is the Director of the Public Policy and Administration PhD Program, and Associate Director of the Education and Social Policy PhD Program, and is a research affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Her research focuses broadly on social stratification and public policy. In particular, she focuses on integrating theoretical insights from relational and social theorists into the empirical study of inequalities. She brings this approach to the study of social policy, education, race, politics, and citizenship.

Her current research includes three streams. The first focuses on U.S. social policies, examining their social and distributional impacts as well as their consequences for civic and political life. The second focuses on schools as organized sites of racialized authority relations that shape life trajectories and function as formative experiences of citizenship. The third focuses on the interplay of racial and economic inequalities, seeking to clarify how they relate to each other, how they are connected to state policy choices, and how they are produced through specific relational and policy mechanisms.

Dr. Bruch has been recognized for her substantial program of engaged research on equity and inclusion in education. In 2019, she was the inaugural awardee of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Institutional Legacy Award for Significant Contributions to the University of Iowa for her work leading a comprehensive assessment of campus climate and engaging stakeholders to inform the University’s first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan. In 2020, she was awarded the William Foote Whyte Distinguished Career Award for her contributions as an applied sociologist engaged in community-based, participatory research on educational equity and racial inequality. The award recognized her work from 2015–2019 as the principal investigator and co-director of the Equity Implemented Partnership, a research-practice partnership with school districts in Iowa. Using a research-practice model, this partnership leveraged social science and education policy research and practitioner knowledge to more effectively address persistent problems of policy and practice and improve students’ educational opportunities and outcomes.​​