Professor of Sociology, Whitman College
Phone: 509-527-4952
Email: janninmy@whitman.edu
Topics of Expertise: Children / Gender & Sexuality / Parenthood: Motherhood/Fatherhood / Work & Family
Michelle Janning is Professor of Sociology and The Raymond and Elsie Gipson DeBurgh Chair of Social Science. In addition to introductory courses and thesis advising, she teaches courses in the areas of family, gender, childhood, community-based research, human-centered design and education.
Professor Janning’s research focuses on the intersection between social roles and relationships and the spaces and objects of everyday life. In addition to her frequent public speaking and applied consulting projects, she has done interdisciplinary research on how family roles connect with home and neighborhood design, the role of digital and physical objects and spaces on intimate relationships, the impacts of COVID-19 on families and schools, and the social meaning of vacation homes and investment properties in changing conceptions of the family.
She has written or edited several books, including The Stuff of Family Life: How our Homes Reflect our Lives (2017), Love Letters: Saving Romance in the Digital Age (2018), and Contemporary Parenting and Parenthood: From News Headlines to New Research (2019). She is a frequent contributor to blog posts and news stories about contemporary family issues, and has been featured in stories from NBC News, BBC, NPR, PBS, Christian Science Monitor, The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, Parents.com, Vox, Real Simple, and The New York Times. Michelle has received a Fulbright for teaching and assessment projects with DIS-Study Abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she has also taught courses in family and childhood studies in the Scandinavian context.
