Chair

    • Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
    • Professor
    • I am trained in class analysis, political sociology, and sociology of development (globalization). However, my work in the last 20 years has been in the area of race. I have published on racial theory, race and methodology, color-blind racism, the idea that race stratification in the USA is becoming Latin America-like, racial grammar, HWCUs, race and ...
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Director of Undergraduate Studies

    • Rebecca L. Bach
    • Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of Undergraduate Studies
    • My major interests in sociology include gender, sexuality, and inequality. My past research has focused on a diverse range of topics associated with gender inequality in work and family roles including an analysis of the structural determinants of gender composition of university and college faculties, a longitudinal examination of educational decision-making and its relationship to ...
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Director of Graduate Studies

Faculty

Faculty

    • Rebecca L. Bach
    • Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of Undergraduate Studies
    • My major interests in sociology include gender, sexuality, and inequality. My past research has focused on a diverse range of topics associated with gender inequality in work and family roles including an analysis of the structural determinants of gender composition of university and college faculties, a longitudinal examination of educational decision-making and its relationship to ...
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    • Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
    • Professor
    • I am trained in class analysis, political sociology, and sociology of development (globalization). However, my work in the last 20 years has been in the area of race. I have published on racial theory, race and methodology, color-blind racism, the idea that race stratification in the USA is becoming Latin America-like, racial grammar, HWCUs, race and ...
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    • Matt Bradshaw
    • Assistant Professor
    • Matt Bradshaw’s research focuses on three interrelated topics: I. Gene-Environment Interplay and Health: Matt’s research in this area employs twin sibling models and molecular genetic techniques to examine how genes and environments work together in correlated and interactive ways to affect health. He is currently working on a paper examining ...
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    • Linda Burton
    • James B. Duke Professor of Sociology
    • My program of research is conceptually grounded in life course, developmental, and ecological perspectives and focuses on three themes concerning the lives of America's poorest urban, small town, and rural families: (1) intergenerational family structures, processes, and role transitions; (2) the meaning of context and place in the daily lives of ...
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    • Mark A. Chaves
    • Professor of Sociology, Religion, and Divinity
    • Professor Chaves specializes in the sociology of religion. Most of his research is on the social organization of religion in the United States. Among other projects, he directs the National Congregations Study (NCS), a wide-ranging survey of a nationally representative sample of religious congregations conducted in 1998, 2006-07, and 2012. NCS results have helped us to better understand many ...
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    • Bai Gao
    • Professor
    • I received my B.A. in Japanese Language and Literature in 1983, and M.A. in Comparative Higher Education in 1986 from Beijing University. I received an M.A. in 1990 and a Ph.D in Sociology in January 1994 from Princeton University. Before entering the United States, I worked as a research fellow at Beijing University. I have worked as visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo, Hitotsubashi ...
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    • Linda K George
    • Professor
    • I received my B.A. and M.A. in sociology from the Miami University of Ohio. My Ph.D. in sociology is from Duke University (1975) and my postdoctoral training, in aging, was performed at Duke University School of Medicine. I am a sociologist interested in social psychology, aging and adult development, medical sociology, and family relationships. I ...
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    • Gary Gereffi
    • Professor
    • Gary Gereffi's research interests deal with the competitive strategies of global firms, the governance of global value chains, economic and social upgrading, and the emerging global knowledge economy. His major ongoing research projects are: (1) industrial upgrading, global production networks, and decent work in Asia, the Americas, Eastern Europe, ...
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    • Kieran J Healy
    • Associate Professor
    • My research interests are in economic sociology, culture, and organizations. I have written several articles and a book about gift and market exchange in human blood and organs. I’ve also published work on the relationship between information technology and culture, wage growth and unemployment in OECD labor markets, and debates about structure and agency ...
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    • Lisa A Keister
    • Professor and Director of the Markets & Management Program
    • My research is concentrated in two areas in economic sociology: the study of wealth inequality and the study of complex organizations, particularly in China. Both research agendas explore the emergence of social structure and the subsequent effect of social structure on the behaviors of actors. I conduct research in two diverse contexts and on two ...
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    • Kenneth C Land
    • John Franklin Crowell Professor of Demographic Studies and Sociology
    • I received my Ph.D. in sociology and mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1969. After a year of postdoctoral study in mathematical statistics at Columbia University in New York City, I taught there and was a member of the staff of the Russell Sage Foundation for three years. I then was successively a member of the faculties of the ...
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    • S. Philip Morgan
    • Norb F. Schaefer Professor of International Studies
    • Statement of Current and Future Research Program S. Philip Morgan, Sociology Department, Duke University10/28/2006 My research focuses on human fertility. More specifically I ask: what factors explain variation in fertility across populations? A sociological perspective guides my research. This perspective focuses attention on group-specific ...
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    • Angela M O'Rand
    • Dean of Social Sciences and Professor
    • My major research interests focus on patterns of inequality across the life span, with a special interest in the temporal diversity of life transitions, their consequences for later life, and the impact of institutions on these transitions over time. Over thirty-three years I have examined workplace policies related to wage and benefit structures and ...
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    • Lynn Smith-Lovin
    • Robert L. Wilson Professor of Sociology
    • I study identity, action and emotional response. I’m interested in the basic question of how identities affect social interaction. I use experimental, observational, survey and simulation methods to describe how identities, actions and emotions are interrelated. The experiments I do usually involve creating social situations where unusual things ...
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    • Ken Spenner
    • Professor
    • My current research involves a multi-year panel study of racial and ethnic differences in academic performance. A substantial body of research documents a gap in performance among different groups, yet the reasons why are only partly clear. Our research design follows two cohorts of Duke University undergraduates, the incoming classes of 2001 and ...
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    • Stephen Vaisey
    • Associate Professor
    • The main goal of my current research is to understand the varieties, origins, and consequences of different moral worldviews. I want to know where people get their ideas about what a "good life" looks like and what it means to be a "good person" and how these (usually implicit) ideas help shape their strategies of action over time. In recent months, I have also been writing about the promise ...
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Secondary Appointment

    • Lee D. Baker
    • Professor, Cultural Anthropology of African & African American Studies and Sociology, and Dean of Academic Affairs of Trinity College
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    • Michaeline A Crichlow
    • Professor of African & African American Studies and Sociology
    • I am interested in projects related to citizenship, nationalism and development mainly in the Atlantic and Pacific regions generally. My current projects are focused on the sorts of claims that populations deemed diasporic make on states, and how this reconfigures their communities and general sociocultural practices. I am also interested in development's impact on social and economic environments, and the way this structures and restructures people's assessments of their spaces for the articulation and pursuit of ...
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    • Jonathon N Cummings
    • Associate Professor of Management and Organizations and Sociology
    • Geographically Dispersed Teams, Scientific Collaboration, Managerial Effectiveness
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    • Elizabeth Frankenberg
    • Professor of Public Policy and Sociology and Associate Professor of Public Policy Studies
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    • Christina M. Gibson-Davis
    • Associate Professor of Public Policy, Sociology, and Assistant Professor of Public Policy Studies, Center for Child and Family Policy and Assistant Professor of Psychology: Social and Health Sciences
    • Research: Causes and consequences of marriage formation for low-income families; health and well-being of low-income families and children
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    • Deborah T. Gold
    • Associate Professor of Medical Sociology and Director of the Human Development Certificate Program
    • Dr. Gold's research focuses on the psychosocial consequences of chronic illness in late life. In particular, she has studies the impact of an exercise and psychosocial intervention on women with osteoporosis living in retirement communities as well as the impact of chronic pain on community-dwelling older women with osteoporosis. She has also looked at issues of ...
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    • Frances S Hasso
    • Associate Professor in Women's Studies, International Comparative Studies, and Sociology; Director, International Comparative Studies Program
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    • Sherman A James
    • Susan B. King Professor of Public Policy and Susan B. King Professor of Public Policy Studies and Professor of Community and Family Medicine; Professor of African and African-American Studies
    • Research: Social determinants of U.S. racial and ethnic health disparities; community-based and public policy interventions to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities
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    • M. Giovanna Merli
    • Associate Professor of Public Policy, Sociology and Global Health and Associate Professor of Public Policy Studies
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    • William M O'Barr
    • Professor of Cultural Anthropology, English and Sociology
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Visiting Faculty

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    • Martha Reeves
    • Visiting Professor
    • Dr. Reeves received her BA from the University of Montana, her MA from Truman State University, and her Ph.D. in human resources management and industrial relations from the University of Keele, United Kingdom. She has published articles on reward management, virtual teams, and appraisal systems and is the author of Suppressed, Forced Out and Fired (Greenwood Press, 2000), focusing ...
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Faculty Emeriti

    • Nan Lin
    • Oscar L. Tang Family Professor of Sociology
    • My main research interests are social networks and social capital, the life stress process (especially social support as resources), social stratification and mobility, and Chinese societies.
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    • Miller McPherson
    • Professor Emeritus
    • Most of my research focuses on voluntary groups and the social networks that draw people into and out of them. But my research agenda is more ambitious than that. I think that the general ecological theory of affiliation that I have developed shows how any social entity that spreads through networks behaves. We’ve already applied the theory to ...
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    • Ida H Simpson
    • Professor Emerita
    • I received my B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from the University of Alabama and my Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina in 1955. I taught at William and Mary, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Illinois, Chicago before joining the Duke Faculty in 1967. My main research interests are occupations and occupational changes, ...
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    • Joel Smith
    • Professor Emeritus
    • My continuing research interest focuses on large-scale social units, their principles of organization and the processes by which they survive. I am particularly interested in the coercive and voluntaristic processes that shape individual conformity to organizational needs and experiences. Much of my current work is devoted to the (NSF supported) Quebec Referendum Study, which is intended to shed light ...
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    • Edward A Tiryakian
    • Professor Emeritus
    • I received my B.A. summa cum laude from Princeton University and my Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University. Prior to my appointment at Duke I taught at both Princeton and Harvard. At Duke I have served as departmental chair and as Director of International Studies (1989-91), in which capacity I was instrumental in internationalizing the university. ...
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    • John Wilson
    • Professor Emeritus
    • I received my PH.D. from the University of Oxford in 1966 and taught for two years at the University of East Anglia in England before joining the sociology department at Duke. I have published books on social movements, religion, leisure, sport and social theory. Currently, I am conducting a number of studies of volunteers, looking at who volunteers, ...
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Affiliated Faculty

    • Gilbert W Merkx
    • Vice Provost For Int'l Affairs and Professor Of The Practice
    • I received my A.B. from Harvard University and my M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University. I have been a Fulbright scholar at the Universidad Nacional San Cristó bal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, Perú; a visiting scholar at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and a visiting scholar at the Latin Amerika Institutet, Stockholms Universität, ...
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    • Suzanne E Shanahan
    • Associate Research Professor and Associate Director of Ethics, Kenan Institute
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    • Zeng Yi
    • Affiliated Faculty and Professor at the Center for Study of Aging and Human Development and Geriatric Division / Dept of Medicine of Medical School, and Institute of Population Research
    • I received my doctoral degree from Brussels Free University in May 1986, and conducted my post-doctoral study at Princeton University, 1986-87. Currently, I am a Professor at Center for Study of Aging and Human Development and Department of Sociology of Duke University, a Professor of Peking University in China, and Distinguished Research Scholar of Max ...
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Lecturers and Instructors

    • Carl W Nordgren
    • Lecturer, University
    • Carl's extensive experience in entrepreneurship includes cellular telecommunications, advertising, and marketing. He has helped many young start-up companies and entrepreneurs through mentoring and acting as interim CEO, in addition to founding and running his own companies. Carl has recently started a new consulting practice that claims the ...
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Postdoctoral Fellow

    • Michelle M Christian
    • Postdoctoral Research Scholar
    • My research focuses on the intersection between racial and gender stratification, economic globalization, and labor. My dissertation analyzed the racial mechanisms of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification for micro businesses and workers in the tourism global value chain in Costa Rica. I compared two tourism towns in Costa Rica that had different racial demographics, connections to the Costa Rican state, and positions in the global ...
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    • Katherine E King
    • Postdoctoral Associate
    • My long-term professional goal is to conduct academic research investigating the implications of the geography of social stratification, including contributions of environmental health exposures to multidimensional quality of life, especially for vulnerable populations such as late life adults. Specifically, I am interested in (1) how individuals ...
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    • Lydia Manning
    • Postdoctoral Scholar
    • As a social gerontologist, I investigate complex and pressing problems related to aging through independent research that integrates the perspectives and methodologies of gerontology, sociology, and women’s studies. My research reflects a commitment to the interdisciplinary exploration of aging. Through my research, I investigate and promote health and well-being for older adults. I do this work in four related areas: spirituality, ...
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    • Saunjuhi Verma
    • Postdoctoral Associate
    • My long-term research agenda is to understand how state level workforce regulations affect labor market inequality for low-income populations, particularly racial minorities. My work thus far has focused upon regulation of migrant workers and global labor markets. My book manuscript entitled Black Gold, Brown Labor: The Legalization of Indentured Work through the Transnational Migration Industry, seeks to explain why despite the recent economic downturn there has been an increased ...
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Staff

Administrative

Computing and Data Services

Graduate Students

    • Regina S. Baker
    • My broad research areas are social stratification, poverty and inequality. I am particularly interested in how micro and macro factors help create, maintain, and reproduce systems of inequality. I am also interested in the causes and consequences of poverty for children and families. Accordingly, my dissertation is a multi-level analysis of the determinants ...
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    • E. Paige Borelli
    • My research focuses on the economic and health stratification outcomes associated with immigration. Additionally, I have published and presented research on the how China's economic transition contributes to social inequality. My dissertation research combines these two interests by asking: how do processes occurring in an immigrants home country, ...
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    • Raphaël Charron-Chénier
    • Raph C. Chénier is a Ph.D. student in the Sociology department at Duke University. His research focuses on consumption and social stratification, with a focus on the contemporary United States. He is currently working on a paper (with Lisa Keister and Joshua Fink) dealing with racial and ethnic differences in access to consumption in the US, and on a paper ...
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    • Trenita Childers
    • My research interests are medical sociology (health disparities and access to health care) and race/ethnicity
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    • David Eagle
    • My research is motivated by how religion relates to stratification outcomes and to broader social change. Presently, I am studying religious organizational change; religion, gender and stratification; cross-national patterns of affiliation and participation; immigration’s effects on religiosity; and the role of the media in shaping public discourse ...
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    • Steven L. Foy
    • Medical Sociology, Social Psychology, Race and Ethnicity
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    • Brad R. Fulton
    • Most voluntary associations and social movement organizations tend to be homogeneous in their social composition, yet some have achieved notable levels of diversity. Meanwhile, even though many associations aspire to be diverse, diversity’s consequences for organizational effectiveness remain unclear. My research analyzes the causes and consequences of diversity within voluntary associations and social movement organizations. I seek to explain how associations become diverse and ...
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    • Sancha Medwinter
    • Dissertation Title: When Do Good Networks Fail?: Assessing the Impact of Immigrant Status, Gender and Action of Social Ties on the Socioeconomic Incorporation of First-Generation West Indians in New York City. Chair: Nan Lin Sancha earned her M.A. in Sociology and advanced to doctoral candidacy at Duke University in May, 2012. She graduated Summa ...
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    • S Joshua Mendelsohn
    • My research examines the consequences of socio-economic networks and geo-spatial configurations for the distribution of resources in a globalized world. My approach is quantitatively-oriented, blending network and spatial analysis methods with a healthy dose of scientific programming. Visit My Website
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    • Andrew A. Miles
    • My primary focus is on integrating and improving theories of behavior across academic disciplines. At present I am examining how people's identities interact with one another and with other personal constructs (like attitudes) to influence patterns of behavior. I also study morality, religion, and health.
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    • Heather M. Rackin
    • Substantively, my research focuses on the family and fertility with an interest in how inequality results in different family forms. I explore the links between marriage and fertility with a focus on how cognitive schemas and material conditions interact for low-income Blacks. Methodologically, I use Network Text Analysis combined with traditional ...
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    • Victor E. Ray
    • Race and Ethnicity Stratification Sociological Theory Qualitative Methods
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    • Kimberly B. Rogers
    • Kimberly B. Rogers is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Duke University. She received her M.A. in Psychology from Wake Forest University in 2005, and her M.A. in Sociology from Duke University in 2008. Kimberly's dissertation project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, is entitled “Mapping the Social Ecology ...
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    • Melanie D. Sereny
    • Demography Medical Sociology Aging Chinese Society Intergenerational Relations
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