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Department of Sociology
soc@umn.edu
612-624-4300
soc@umn.edu
612-624-4300
Alumni Profiles
A-F
Joan Aldous (Ph.D. 1963) is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Her work has focused on the sociology of family, specifically dealing with the relationship between fathers and their children, gender, and intergenerational exchange relationships. Dr. Aldous has received several honors for her work, including the Ernest W. Burgess Award for her theories and contributions in family sociology, and Notre Dame's Graduate School Award for Teaching and Scholarship. She has also been elected to the American Sociological Association Council and received research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation.
Edward Brent, Jr. (Ph.D. 1976) is Professor and Associate Chair of Sociology, and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is founder and president of Idea Works, Inc. and has published several programs using intelligent computational strategies to conduct research and teaching in sociology, including Qualrus™ (a qualitative analysis program), Methodologist's Toolchest™, and Connections: Interactive Sociology™. His specialty interests are in methodology, statistics, and computing. Dr. Brent co-authored Computer Applications in the Social Sciences with Ron Anderson (Temple University Press, 1990).
Kathleen Theide Call (Ph.D. 1994) has been working as an Associate Professor, teaching and conducting research at the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities since 1995. She notes that her training in sociology has been indispensable to her work in health services, a field that draws on sociology, economics and political science, among others. Profs. Call and Jeylan Mortimer co-authored the recent Arenas of Comfort in Adolescence: A Study of Adjustment in Comfort (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2001).
Theodore Caplow (Ph.D. in Sociology and Economics 1946; Professor at Minnesota 1954-60) is currently a Commonwealth Professor at the University of Virginia. He has made several notable contributions to sociology in abstract social geometry, armed conflict in the world, social change and kin networks. He has authored or co-authored more than 20 books and 200 research papers. One recent and widely celebrated work (with Ben J. Wattenberg and Louis Hicks), both inside and outside academic circles, is The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America 1900-2000 (AEI Press, 2000). Prof. Caplow was chair of Virginia's Department of Sociology from 1970-1978, and from 1985 to 1987; Director of the Center for Program Effectiveness Studies and later of the University's Medical Mediation Service. He has served as president of the Tocqueville Society, president of the Mendota Research Group and secretary of the American Sociological Association.
Steve Carlton-Ford (Ph.D. 1986) has been conducting research and teaching at the University of Cincinnati. His area of interest is the sociology of childhood with work on the impact of children's chronic illness on individual's behavioral problems (in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior) and cross-nationally on the impact of war on children's life chances (in the journal Childhood). Most recently he has been chosen to be editor of Sociological Focus, the journal of the North Central Sociological Association.
Sara Dorow (Ph.D. 2002) is Associate Professor of Sociology and Acting Director of the Community Service-Learning Program at the University of Alberta, Canada. She teaches in the areas of globalization, race and culture, and family, and continues to build a research program on transnational, transracial adoptive kinship. Her book Transnational Adoption: Race and the Cultural Politics of Kinship is forthcoming with New York University Press. Dr. Dorow has also spearheaded the establishment of a program in Community Service-Learning in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta.
Robert R. Friedmann (Ph.D., 1978) is the inaugural Distinguished Chair of Public Safety Partnerships in the Department of Criminal Justice at the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University. Prof. Friedmann is the founder and director of the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) and the International Law Enforcement Exchange (ILEE). The Distinguished Chair of Public Safety Partnerships is committed to promote efforts towards a better understanding of crime and international terror threats and the challenges they pose. In addition, the chair will work to increase international cooperation in the area of homeland security and promote shared experiences of best practices. For more information see www.cjgsu.net/initiatives/psp.htm.
G-L
Mark A. Hager (Ph.D. 1999) is Associate Professor of Nonprofit Studies in the ASU School of Community Resources & Development and Director of Research in the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy & Nonprofit Innovation. His research interests include the scope and dimensions of the nonprofit sector, the financial operations of and reporting by nonprofit organizations, and volunteerism and volunteer management. He is past research director at Americans for the Arts (Washington, DC), past senior research associate at the Urban Institute (Washington, DC), and past director of the Center for Community & Business Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Margaret A Holmes (Ph.D. 2005) is Senior Research Analyst at the Government Accountability Office. The GAO does research for Congress, is a part of the Legislative Branch and employees around 3,000 people. The work covers all the federal agencies, and 80-90% of its reports stem from Congressional requests. Dr. Holmes has worked on projects concerning federal programs having to do with worker development (welfare, job training, job assistance) and worker protection (workplace safety and health laws, worker protection, etc.). She has been at this post since 2000.
Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson (Ph.D. 1999) is an Associate Professor at Washington State University Pullman Department of Sociology. Her research interests are in the areas of work, family, and education across the life course, with particular focus on social psychological processes in adolescence and the transition to adulthood. Her work has been published in Social Forces, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Sociology of Education.
Ryan King (Ph.D. 2005) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Albany. Recent published work includes forthcoming articles in the Law and Society Review, Social Problems (with Melissa Weiner), and Criminology (with William Brustein). He recently received an award from the Law and Society Association for an article published in the American Journal of Sociology (with Joachim Savelsberg). Professor King's current research focuses on hate crime laws and their enforcement, punitive attitudes, desistance from crime, and the relationship between crime, law and collective memory.
Sherryl Kleinman (Ph.D. 1980) is a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Kleinman regularly teaches undergraduate courses cross-listed in Women's Studies, including sex and gender in society, race, class, gender, and social problems. She co-authored the book Emotions and Fieldwork (Sage, 1993) with Martha Copp. Her most recent book, Opposing Ambitions: Gender and Identity in an Alternative Organization (University of Chicago Press, 1996) analyzes how "progressives" managed to reproduce gender inequality without noticing it and while retaining a view of themselves as virtuous. She is currently working on a new book, Feminist Fieldwork Analysis, for Sage. She is also interested in public sociology and has published many letters on a variety of topics in newspapers in 2004 and 2005, including the New York Times and the LA Times.
Erik Larson (Ph.D. 2004) is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Macalester college in St. Paul. His recently published work includes articles in Law and Society Review and Political Power and Social Theory. His research interests are in political sociology, economic sociology, and sociology of law, which he is pursuing through: a comparison of the development and operation of new stock exchanges in Fiji, Ghana, and Iceland; a collaborative project on the politics of indigenization in Fiji and Tanzania; and a collaborative project on school testing.
M-S
Scott Magnuson-Martinson (Ph.D., 1989) is completing five years as Chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Law Enforcement at Normandale Community College. He will be president of the local chapter of the faculty union in '07-'08. He currently teaches half his load online and presented a workshop on that method of teaching at last year's ASA meetings. He has published almost 40 journal articles and book chapters/sections on a variety of subjects and has received two awards for faculty excellence.
Eric Markusen (Ph.D., 1986) was a prolific scholar of international renown, whose activism and research on genocide reached far beyond the academic realm. He was a Professor of Sociology and Social Work at Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU) and the Research Director of the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark. Markusen’s data has been used in post-genocide trials as evidence. As a part of a team chosen by the Coalition for International Justice, he participated in interviewing 1000 refugees from Darfur. The findings were incorporated into the US State Department's Atrocities Documentation Project, after which a determination was made that genocide was taking place in Sudan. He organized international conferences on genocide and published numerous books and scholarly articles on the subject. Dr. Markusen passed away in January, 2007.
Elam Nunnally (Ph.D., 1971) is Professor Emeritus at the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. One of the originators of Solution Focused Therapy, he continues to teach two graduate seminars each year in Solution Focused Practice, and conducts workshops in Solution Focused Therapy in Finland, most recently (May 2007) for the University of Helsinki, Continuing Education Department. He has a part-time practice in marital therapy, as a volunteer, in a community mental health clinic. This still leaves time to visit his grown children and grandchildren, who are scattered from Hawaii to Santa Fe to Baltimore to Sweden, with his wife, Eeva.
Sandi Pierce (Ph.D. 2001) is employed as a Research Scientist doing applied research at Wilder Research, a subsidiary of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation in St. Paul, Minnesota. Current research and evaluation projects include: a study on the feasibility of conducting a comprehensive assessment of urban American Indian health in Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids MI, Green Bay WI, Milwaukee and Minneapolis for the Bemidji Area Indian Health Service; a study of smoking cessation efforts and barriers in Twin Cities Hmong, Vietnamese, American Indian and African American communities for a physician at the University of Minnesota Medical School; and the evaluation of a federal grant for HIV prevention at the Upper Midwest American Indian Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
William H. Sewell (Ph.D. 1939) became a celebrated professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was elected the 62nd president of the American Sociological Association and was the second chancellor of UW-Madison. Sewell's career as a pioneer of empirical social science spanned more than six decades.
Michael Shanahan (Ph.D. 1991) is an Associate Professor of Sociology and a faculty member at the Center for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford), an Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State University, and a Visiting Professor in Developmental Psychology at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany. He has co-edited Comparisons in Human Development (Cambridge University Press, 1997) with Jonathan Tudge and Jann Valsiner; Transitions to Adulthood in a Changing Economy: No Work, No Family, No Future? (Praeger Publishers, 1999) with Alan Booth and Ann Crouter; and Handbook of the Life Course (Kluwer, 2003) with Jeylan Mortimer.
Deborah Shatin (Ph.D. 1980) was recently appointed to serve on the CMS Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee (MedCAC). The purpose of this Advisory Committee is to provide scientific input to CMS and DHHS regarding issuance of national coverage determinations through review and assessment of requirements for clinical data on a particular medical technology. The committee reviews and evaluates medical literature, reviews technology assessments, and examines data and information on the effectiveness and appropriateness of medical items and services that are covered or eligible for coverage under Medicare.
Xiaoling Shu (Ph.D. 1997) joined the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of California Davis as an Assistant Professor in 1997. She has two forthcoming works (with Prof. Yanjie Bian) that will be published in Social Forces and Social Stratification and Mobility. A contribution by Prof. Shu will also be feature in the upcoming Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods (Sage).
Sheldon Stryker (Ph.D. 1955), Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Indiana University-Bloomington, made his career building the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) training program at Indiana State University. His work and research focus on the social psychology theory, self-identity theory and political sociology. Stryker's recent published work includes Self, Identity and Social Movements (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), co-edited with Timothy Owens and Robert White, and Symbolic Interactionism (Blackburn Press, 2003).
T-Z
Sylvia Tamale (Ph.D. 1997) is the Dean of the Faculty of Law at Makerere University and an Advocate of the Courts of Judicature in Uganda. In 2003, she received the University of Minnesota's Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals. Her dissertation was published by Westview Press (1999) as "When Hens Begin To Crow: Gender and Parliamentary Politics in Uganda." Dr. Tamale is a public intellectual who routinely appears on radio and television and in the newspapers as an articulate spokesperson for Ugandan women and as a prominent human rights advocate. She played the leading role in efforts to establish a sexual harassment policy at Makerere University and has been in the forefront of legislative efforts to establish women's rights in the areas of land ownership and family relations.
Melissa Thompson (Ph.D. 2003) is an Assistant Professor at Portland State University, Department of Sociology. Her research interests are in the areas of crime, mental illness, and gender, with particular focus on the social control of mental illness and how race and gender affect labeling and treatment. She has been published in Law and Society Review with Elizabeth Heger Boyleand in the American Journal of Sociology with Christopher Uggen. Professor Thompson is currently working on a book focusing on psychiatric evaluations in the criminal justice system; this book is forthcoming from LFB Scholarly Publishing.
Hui Wilcox (Ph.D. 2004) is an Assistant Professor at the College of St. Catherine, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She teaches both Sociology and Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity. Her research focuses on Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and Sociology of Dance. In her spare time, Professor Wilcox performs with Ananya Dance Theatre, a dance company for women of color.
