Faculty
Faculty
Mark Austin, PhD
Dr. Austin is an associate professor of sociology and also serves on the program faculty of the Urban and Public Affairs Ph.D. program. A good deal of his past and current research has focused on issues related to community and urban sociology examining matters such as perceptions of safety, attitudes about growth and the environment, reactions to crime, and factors related to neighborhood satisfaction. While much of his past research has focused on geographically stable communities, in more recent work he has examined issues related to geographically mobile communities with some of the research dealing with community, historical, and subcultural issues involving motorcyclists in American culture.
Some of his recent works include "Graffiti and Perceptions of Safety: A Pilot Study Using Photographs and Survey Data" with Claudia Sanders; "Community in a Mobile Subculture: The World of the Touring Motorcyclist" with Patricia Gagne'; "Ritual and Boundary Distinction in a Recreational Community: A Case Study of Motorcycle Rallies and Riders"; "Commodification and Popular Imagery of the Biker in American Culture" with Patricia Gagne' and Angela Orend; and "The Effects of Neighborhood Satisfaction on Perception of Safety Among Refugees From the Former Soviet Union," with L. Allen Furr, Sarah Cribbs, and Steve Smoger.
Areas of research/expertise: community/urban sociology, and crime. Link to CV.
austin@louisville.edu (502) 852-3569
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James K. Beggan, PhD
Dr. Beggan is a professor of sociology and was born in Buffalo, New York. He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo for his undergraduate work and earned a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was hired at the University of Louisville and is currently an associate professor of sociology. Over the years, he has taught courses on a wide range of topics including consumer behavior, industrial psychology, gender, human sexuality, statistics, and the self and society. In his course on the sociology of human sexuality, he often applies insights from game theory and the prisoners' dilemma game toward understanding relationship dynamics and gender conflict.
He has published research on the psychology of ownership and self-serving judgment biases, including how people overestimate their abilities to resist temptation. His current research interests include the representation of gender in mass media and the social construction of pornography. In these areas, he has published articles on Playboy, feminist-oriented pornography, and women's magazines. He has performed open mic stand-up comedy. He enjoys various types of ballroom dances, especially foxtrot and cha cha. He especially enjoys vintage swing dancing, such as Lindy Hop, and often teaches classes on Lindy Hop and East Coast Swing.
His current research projects involve (1) understanding verbal and non-verbal communication in the context of social dances, (2) the way in which gender and body image is presented in exercise DVDs and exercise infomercials, and (3) the way in which people think about their sexual self-efficacy, that is how they see their own sexual performance.
Areas of research/expertise: gender and sexuality. Link to CV.
james.beggan@louisville.edu (502) 852-6069
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Latrica E. Best, PhD
Dr. Best is an assistant professor of sociology and also holds a joint appointment with the Pan-African Studies Department at UofL. Dr. Best’s expertise is in the area of race and gender differences in population health across the life course. Her recent work explores the impact of psychosocial factors on race/ethnic differences in undiagnosed and poorly managed diabetes and hypertension. She also conducts research examining the nature in which various socially defined trajectories initiate and sustain mental health disparities among African-American and white women from emerging adulthood to later life. Dr. Best received a BA in biology and sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and both an MA and PhD in sociology and demography, with a minor in gerontology, from The Pennsylvania State University. Prior to her arrival in Louisville, Dr. Best was a National Institute on Aging Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California’s Davis School of Gerontology. She teaches courses in The Black Family, Social Contexts of Aging, and Research Methods.
Areas of research/expertise: race/ethnicity, aging. Link to CV.
latrica.best@louisville.edu (502) 852-5123
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Derrick R. Brooms, PhD
Dr. Brooms is an assistant professor of sociology. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Loyola University Chicago, specializing in race relations, identity, representation, and culture. Dr. Brooms’ research investigates representations of African American identity and culture within the media with specific focus on museums. Additionally, his research focuses on African American boys and men, specifically examining their educational experiences and identity development.
Areas of research/expertise: race/ethnicity, masculinity and identity. Link to CV.
dr.brooms@louisville.edu (502) 852-8026
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John A. Busch, PhD
Dr. Busch is as an associate professor of sociology and has investigated general systems theory and sociocybernetics as a philosophical basis for sociological theory. Upon that systems framework he is engaged in developing theoretical approaches to the understanding of social systems in general. This has necessitated investigations into the social construction of reality, political economy inequality, and the reciprocal influences of self and society. In particular these have led to the investigation of authoritarian disposition, cults and the dynamics of religiosity, racial and gender inequality, formal organizations, information societies and globalization, and the overall dynamics of inequality in the U.S. as an outlier among all post-industrial nations.
Areas of research/expertise: theory, social problems. Link to CV.
john.busch@louisville.edu (502) 852-8015
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Robert M. Carini, PhD
Dr. Carini is an associate professor of sociology, and his research examines the sociologies of leisure, family, and education. He is collaborating on several projects that theorize how individuals are socialized into different leisure activities, and how they are, in turn, socialized by their participation. In particular, he is considering how gender shapes leisure/sport participation. Finally, he is interested in the various roles that leisure plays in family life. Dr. Carini was co-recipient of the American Sociological Association’s 2007 Outstanding Publication Award (Section on Aging and the Life Course) for “Advancing Age, Advantaged Youth: Parental Age and the Transmission of Resources to Youths.” His articles have appeared in Social Forces, Harvard Educational Review, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Phi Delta Kappan, Research in Higher Education, and The Journal of Higher Education. Finally, he teaches undergraduate methods and statistics courses, sociology of family, sociology of leisure, and our doctoral statistics course.
Areas of research/expertise: leisure, family, education. Link to CV.
bob.carini@louisville.edu (502) 852-8030
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Karen Christopher, PhD
Dr. Christopher is as associate professor of sociology and has a joint apopintment with the Women's and Gender Studies Department at UofL. She received her PhD in Sociology from University of Arizona in 2000. Since then, she has published articles and book chapters in the following areas: gender and the welfare state; gender, race, and labor markets; and motherhood.
Dr. Christopher is currently working on two research projects: She is in the final stages of a research project on welfare recipients attending higher education. Her other project is a cross-national comparison of U.S. and Canadian mothers with young children. This project extends the "choice-centered" literature on mothers' employment and caregiving decisions by exploring the contexts of mothers' decision-making: how employers, government policies, partners, and other social networks affect mothers' decisions. This project also contributes a diverse sample of mothers with varied racial/ethnic, social class, and immigrant backgrounds.
Areas of research/expertise: gender/welfare state; gender, race, and labor markets; motherhood. Link to CV.
k.christopher@louisville.edu (502) 852-5123
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Patricia Gagné, PhD
Dr. Gagné is an associate professor of sociology. She chairs the Graduate Committee and serves as Graduate Coordinator for the Department's MA and PhD programs. Her research focuses on gender and includes numerous articles on intimate partner violence, transgenderism, women and body work, andn the personal and social benefits women derive from serious edgework leisure. She teaches undergraduate and graduate level theory courses, graduate qualitiative methods, anda graduate course on gender and sexuality. She lives on a small farm outside Louisville where she keeps and boards horses.
Areas of research/expertise: gender, social theory. Link to CV.
gagne@louisville.edu (502) 852-8014
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Lauren Heberle, PhD
Dr. Heberle is an assistant professor in sociology and is also the Director of the Environmental Finance Center and Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Management. She currently teaches statistics and environmental sociology. Her areas of research include urban redevelopment, environmental policy, environmental justice, and sustainable development. She sits on or serves as expert witness for several community and federal advisory committees and task forces including the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District PM2.5 and Idling Regulation work groups, Louisville Climate Change Committee, and the EPA Environmental Finance Advisory Board.
Areas of research/expertise: urban sociology, environmental sociology. Link to CV.
lauren.heberle@louisville.edu (502) 852-4749
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Robin S. Högnäs, PhD
Dr. Högnäs is an assistant professor of sociology who received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2005. Prior to joining the faculty in the fall of 2012, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Demography & Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research is primarily concerned with the causes and consequences of family instability, a growing phenomenon in the United States. Dr. Högnäs is also interested in the links between family and children’s health and health behaviors (particularly childhood obesity) and the role of social networks in the lives of low-income families.
When Dr. Högnäs is not working, she enjoys hanging out with family and friends, exercising, reading, cooking, and all things related to music.
Areas of research/expertise: family, social demography, social networks. Link to CV.
robin.hognas@louisville.edu (502) 852-8022
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Andrea Koven, ABD
Prof. Koven is a visiting lecturer in sociology.
Areas of research/expertise: race/ethnicity, urban sociology. Link to CV.
andrea.koven@louisville.edu (502) 852-2089
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Gul Marshall, PhD
Dr. Marshall is an associate professor of sociology. She teaches Sociology of Gender, Social Theory, Gender and Social Movements, Gender in the Middle East, and Women: International Perspective. Her research interests are in the areas of gender, politics, social movements, social policy, and mass media. Her articles on women’s movements and women’s rights in Turkey have been published in journals, such as Gender & Society and Social Politics, as well as in edited volumes. Dr. Marshall’s current line of research highlights the significance of transnational feminist activism in influencing gender policies both at national and supranational levels. She is the author of a forthcoming book on the ways in which the grass-roots women’s organizations as well as the Turkish state and the EU are engaged in shaping gender policies in Turkey.
Areas of research/expertise: gender, women's movements. Link to CV.
gul.marshall@louisville.edu (502) 852-8027
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Cynthia Negrey, PhD
Dr. Negrey is an associate professor of sociology and currently serves as chair of the Sociology Department. She completed a BS in journalism and MA in sociology at Bowling Green State University and a PhD in sociology at Michigan State University. Her specialty areas are political economy, urban labor markets, and gender. She recently published a new book, Work Time: Conflict, Control, and Change (Cambridge, UK: Polity). Dr. Negrey routinely teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Sociology of Economic Life, Sociology of Work, and Urban Sociology and a required course entitled Fundamental Assumptions of Sociology in the PhD program. She also has a formal affiliation with the PhD program in Urban and Public Affairs and teaches UPA 610, Urban Theory. Dr. Negrey took a two-year leave of absence from the University of Louisville in 1999-2001 during which time she was a study director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, DC. There she led a team that researched and co-authored a book-length report entitled Working First but Working Poor: The Need for Education and Training Following Welfare Reform. She has also been a consultant and co-author with colleagues in the Kent School of Social Work on reports and articles on welfare reform in Kentucky.
Areas of research/expertise: political economy, gender. Link to SELECTED PUBLICATIONS.
cynthia.negrey@louisville.edu (502) 852-8023
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Deborah Potter, PhD
Dr. Potter is an assistant professor of sociology, having joined the Sociology Department in the fall of 2009 after completing her joint PhD (Sociology; Social Policy) at Brandeis University in 2007. Although she had received an M.A. earlier in life, she enrolled in her PhD program as a non-traditional student and appreciates the diverse life histories of UofL students. For eight years, including the time she wrote her dissertation, she worked in a non-profit agency as a lead evaluator of state and national mental health programs. Prior to that, for ten years, she was a health research scientist for a national health policy research organization. She brings these prior experiences as an applied researcher to her current work as a medical sociologist.
Expanding upon her interest in the "lay-professional” relationships in healthcare, her dissertation work focused on the social contexts which facilitated partnerships between parents of children with serious emotional disorders and mental health professionals as they implemented one state’s reform of children’s mental health services. In addition to publishing in that area, she has published papers on the medicalization of behaviors (ADHD in adults); the various faces of human growth hormone as a biomedical enhancement; "non-biomedical" influences on medical decision-making; and governmentality and biopower in state legislation on pregnant women’s alcohol consumption. Dr. Potter is finishing two qualitative research projects: one investigates the construction of lay-professional identities of mental health "consumer consultants" and the second examines lay participation in "laughter clubs" as a form of alternative health self-care. She also currently is co-investigator in an interdisciplinary project at UofL, “Exploring Culture, Community, Communication, and F&V [Fruit and Vegetable] Intake in Black Kentuckians” (funded by the National Institutes of Health). In her next project, she is planning to examine “whole health” in the lives of women who have both a chronic physical health condition and a mental disorder.
She currently is teaching undergraduate courses in the Department on medical sociology, sociology of women’s health, and research methods. In the PhD program, she teaches Program Evaluation. Outside of her life as a sociologist, in addition to training her three dogs (an Australian Shepherd mix, a German Shepherd Dog, and a Border Collie) and competing in dog agility trials, she has interned as a dog trainer and now coaches dog-owners.
Areas of research/expertise: medical sociology, mental health. Link to CV.
deborah.potter@louisville.edu (502) 852-7983
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Jon H. Rieger, PhD
Dr. Rieger is a professor of sociology.
Areas of research/expertise: visual sociology, rural sociology. Link to CV.
jhrieger@louisville.edu (502) 852-8029
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David Roelfs, PhD
Dr. Roelfs is an assistant professor of sociology, having joined the department in 2011 after receiving his PhD from Stony Brook University. Dr. Roelfs conducts research in two distinct areas. His organizations research focuses on the diffusion processes associated with enclosed shopping malls and non-enclosed shopping centers and on the economic, ecological, and organizational factors that explain where enclosed malls fail. His social epidemiology research focuses on the complex relationships between various psychosocial stressors, social relationship types, and immigration status on subsequent health and mortality. Dr. Roelfs’ recent publications have appeared in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Social Science and Medicine, Demography, the Journal of Management Inquiry, and the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Areas of research/expertise: statistics, organizations, social epidemiology. Link to CV.
djroel01@louisville.edu (502) 852-8038
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Ryan Schroeder, PhD
Dr. Schroeder is an associate professor of sociology, and his research interests include criminal offending throughout the life course, the relationship between drugs and crime, the impact of family structure and processes on adult offending, the processes by which religion and religiosity affect criminal desistance, and the effect of poor physical health on crime. Overall, the aim of Dr. Schroeder's research is to test and develop criminological theory, as well as to promote a better understanding of the ways in which social processes influence criminal offending.
Dr. Schroeder's recent publications have appeared in Criminology, American Journal of Sociology, Deviant Behavior, and American Journal of Public Health. One of his papers, "Emotions and Crime Over the Life Course: A Neo-Meadian Perspective on Criminal Continuity and Change," was awarded the 2009 James F. Short, Jr. Outstanding Article Award by the American Sociological Association section on Crime, Law, and Deviance. His current projects include a theoretical assessment of non-medical prescription drugs use, tracing the relationship between trajectories of childhood parental attachment and adult criminal offending, and an application of criminological theory to the development and termination of civil wars. Currently, Dr. Schroeder is also the editor of the Contemporary Journal of Anthropology and Sociology.
When not teaching classes or conducting research, Dr. Schroeder is an avid sports fan, poker enthusiast, and golfer, and enjoys spending time with his wife and children.
Areas of research/expertise: criminology, victimization. Link to CV.
rdschr01@louisville.edu (502) 852-8010
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Hiromi Taniguchi, PhD
Dr. Taniguchi is an associate professor of sociology, and her general research interest is to study how the timing of life events and the intersection of major life domains affect our life chances. Her current studies are about marriage in Japan, and intergenerational support exchange between adult children and their parents, also in Japan. Recently, she has also done research on civic engagement in the US and Japan.
Areas of research/expertise: life course, social demography. Link to CV.
hiromi.taniguchi@louisville.edu (502) 852-8005
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