I am Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, Chair of the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality, and the 2024-25 Vice President of the American Sociological Association. My research and teaching focus on how people forge connections and find meaning and dignity at work and at home. My current research, supported by the National Science Foundation, is a study of the standardization of work that relies on relationship, and has taken me from observing primary care in Virginia to juvenile detention classrooms in California to robots in Japan. My book about this humane interpersonal work, and the threats it faces from both audit culture and automation, is entitled The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World, and is forthcoming in June 2024 from Princeton University Press.
See here and here for media coverage of my work in the New York Times, the Atlantic, The Washington Post, and other outlets. I also write and speak to wider audiences; see here for a selection of pieces in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Aeon, The Harvard Business Review, and elsewhere.
I am Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, Chair of the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality, and the 2024-25 Vice President of the American Sociological Association. My research and teaching focus on how people forge connections and find meaning and dignity at work and at home. My current research, supported by the National Science Foundation, is a study of the standardization of work that relies on relationship, and has taken me from observing primary care in Virginia to juvenile detention classrooms in California to robots in Japan. My book about this humane interpersonal work, and the threats it faces from both audit culture and automation, is entitled The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World, and is forthcoming in June 2024 from Princeton University Press.
See here and here for media coverage of my work in the New York Times, the Atlantic, The Washington Post, and other outlets. I also write and speak to wider audiences; see here for a selection of pieces in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Aeon, The Harvard Business Review, and elsewhere.
