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Graduate Student Alumna

• Fields of Study

  • Gender and Sexuality

• About

  My research focuses on women’s experiences in the workplace, specifically in the Academy.  More broadly, I study gender, emotion, science, and organizations.  My dissertation was an ethnographic study of graduate students (and postdocs) in a scientific discipline (chemistry).  I explored the relationship between gender and impression management in the many different interactions and contexts in which graduate students find themselves - specifically in the classroom, in the lab, in research meetings, and in informal gatherings with their research groups.  I was particularly interested in how authority and expertise are established and portrayed in scientific settings.  The role of the scientist-in-training (e.g., graduate students and postdocs) provides a unique lens into this process.    

  My other main research focus is on cultural or identity taxation, or the extra burdens of service and mentorship that faculty members shoulder due to their membership in a historically-marginalized group.  I hope to expand my work in this area to explore this phenomenon in under-represented groups other than race and gender, as well as to examine how cultural taxation occurs outside of the academic context.

• Education

  • Ph.D. University of Michigan, 2011
  • M.A. University of Michigan, 2006
  • B.A. Swarthmore College, 2003

• Research Areas of Interest

  • Sex and Gender, Social Psychology, Occupations/Professions, Education, Qualitative Methodology, Statistics

• Dissertation

  • Authority, Expertise, and Impression Management: Gendered Professionalization of Chemists in the Academy (Karin A. Martin, Chair)

• Dissertation Committee

  • Karin A. Martin, Abigail J. Stewart, Mark Chessler, Renee Anspach