Deborah Carr, professor of sociology and director of the Center of Innovation in Social Science, and Vivien Ann Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration and professor emerita of international relations and political science, have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center that convenes leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges. Members have included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alexander Graham Bell, as well as Margaret Mead, Martha Graham, Georgia O’Keeffe, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Madeleine Albright. Current members represent a full spectrum of academic fields and professions, including more than two hundred and fifty Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.
Carr is a life course sociologist who uses survey data and quantitative methods to study social factors linked with health and well-being in later life. She has written extensively on inequality in old age, death and dying, bereavement, family relationships over the life course, and the stigma associated with health conditions including obesity and disability. She has published more than 120 articles and chapters, and several books including Aging in America (2023) and Worried Sick: How Stress Hurts Us and How to Bounce Back (2014), as well as several co-authored textbooks including Introduction to Sociology, Essentials of Sociology, and The Art and Science of Social Research. Her 2019 book Golden Years? Social Inequality in Later Life received the 2020 Richard Kalish Innovative Publication Award from the Gerontological Society of America. She is also co-editor of the Handbook of Aging & Social Sciences, 9th ed.
Carr’s research has been funded by National Institutes of Health, RRF Foundation on Aging, Templeton Foundation, Borchard Foundation, and most recently Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She was editor-in-chief of Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences (2015-20), and is principal investigator of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). She currently serves as editor-in-chief of Journal of Health and Social Behavior (2023-25). She has served on the Board of Directors of the Population Association of America, and as chair of the sections on Aging & the Life Course and Medical Sociology of the American Sociological Association. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, a member of the honorary Sociological Research Association, and the recipient of the 2022 Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award and 2023 Outstanding Mentorship Award from the ASA Aging & Life Course section.
Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration; professor emerita of international relations and political science
Schmidt’s research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory—in particular on the importance of ideas and discourse in political analysis (discursive institutionalism). Her latest books include the forthcoming Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone (2019), Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy (co-edited, 2013), Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union (co-edited, 2011), Democracy in Europe (2006)—named in 2015 by the European Parliament as one of the ‘100 Books on Europe to Remember’—and The Futures of European Capitalism (2002). She has published a dozen books, over 200 scholarly journal articles or chapters in books, and numerous policy briefs and comments, most recently on the Eurozone crisis. Her current work, supported by a Guggenheim fellowship, focuses on the ‘rhetoric of discontent,’ through a transatlantic investigation of the populist revolt against globalization and Europeanization.
Schmidt was a founding director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe and past head of the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) and sits on a number of advisory boards, including the Wissenschaft Zentrum Berlin, the Vienna Institute for Peace, the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (Brussels), and the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute. Her honors, awards, and fellowships include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels (ULB), the Belgian Franqui Interuniversity Chair for foreign scholars, a Rockefeller Bellagio Center Residency, and Fulbright Fellowships to France and the UK.
“I want to extend a heartfelt congratulations to Professors Carr and Schmidt on this well-earned and highly-deserved recognition,” said Stan Sclaroff, dean of Arts & Sciences. “This honor signifies Debby and Vivien’s path breaking contributions to their fields, and the high esteem in which they are held by their colleagues across the country.”
Carr and Schmidt will be inducted into the society in September.