Faculty & Staff

Faculty

Nancy T. Ammerman | Professor and Department Chair: Specializes in the sociology of religion, especially American religious organizations and the social construction of individual religious identities.

Emily Barman | Associate Professor: Focus areas are Sociology of the Nonprofit Sector; Organizations; Economic Sociology; Community; and Sociology of Culture.

Ruha Benjamin | Assistant Professor: Areas of study include the sociology of science and medicine; racialization and the African diaspora; science policy, public health, and critical social theory.

Japonica Brown-Saracino | Assistant Professor: An ethnographer whose research and teaching interests include community and urban and cultural sociology, as well as the study of sexualities.

Catherine Connell | Assistant Professor: A qualitative researcher interested in the intersections of gender, sexuality, and work.

Jeff Coulter | Professor: A theorist who writes about ethnomethodology, the nature of the “mind-body problem,” and the way humans create and use language.

Susan Eckstein | Professor: Does research on developing countries, especially Latin America, focusing on matters of social and political justice, social movements, and immigration.

Julian Go | Associate Professor: A comparative-historical sociologist with a focus on culture and theory, studying especially empires, postcolonialism, global social processes, and the dynamics of meaning-making

Liah Greenfeld | Professor: A preeminent authority on nationalism, her current research focuses on the interrelations between culture and the mind.

Alya Guseva | Associate Professor: Research fields encompass economic and medical sociology, examining markets, post-communist transitions, consumer credit, reproduction and fertility, and commercial surrogacy.

Stephen Kalberg | Associate Professor: A sociological theorist famous for his writing on Max Weber, doing work on comparative political cultures and the sociology of citizenship.

Nazli Kibria | Professor: Specializes in the sociology of migration, especially in relation to family life and identity formation, with a focus on South Asian diasporas.

Ashley Mears | Assistant Professor: Researches how culture is produced, how markets in creative industries work, and how social values constitute economic realms.

Sigrun Olafsdottir | Assistant Professor: Specializes in medical sociology, sociology of mental health, political sociology, and cultural sociology.

Laurel Smith-Doerr | Associate Professor: Investigates how science, gender, and organizations are connected and become institutionalized in contemporary knowledge-based communities.

John Stone | Professor: Focuses on comparative race and ethnic relations, international migration, social change and sociological theory.

David Swartz | Assistant Professor: Studies elites and stratification, education, culture, religion, and social theory, especially the political sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.

Peter Yeager | Associate Professor: Specializes in the sociology of law, criminology and deviancy, with research interests in the construction and enforcement of rules in business and professional settings.

Part-time Faculty

Susan Holsapple | Lecturer: Investigates social stratification with a specific focus on gender and inequality in health care.

Patricia Rieker | Visiting Professor: Specialties include cross national comparisons in gender and health, explanations of health disparities and health outcomes, and evaluation of public health interventions

Post Doctoral

Nicole Aschoff | Post Doctoral Fellow: Focuses on labor, global political economy, development, and comparative/historical sociology

Itai Vardi | Post Doctoral Research Associate: Studying collaboration in the Chemical Sciences as part of an NSF-funded research conducted with Prof. Laurel Smith-Doerr