Deborah Carr, Boston University
Deborah Carr is Professor of Sociology and inaugural director of the Center for Innovation in Social Science at Boston University. She is a life course sociologist who uses longitudinal data to study health and well-being in later life, focusing on the stress imposed by bereavement, stigmatized health conditions including disability and obesity, and the role of family relationships in mitigating against these stressors. Dr. Carr has published more than 150 journal articles and chapters, and several books including Golden Years? Social Inequality in Later Life (Russell Sage 2019), which received the 2020 Kalish Innovative Publication Award from the Gerontological Society of America. Her newest book, Aging in America will be published by University of California Press in 2023. She served as editor-in-chief of Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences (2015-20) and will serve as editor-in-chief of Journal of Health and Social Behavior for the 2023-25 term. She is recipient of the 2022 Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award given by the Aging & Life Course section of the American Sociological Association. Dr. Carr is principal investigator of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979
Robert Crosnoe, UT Austin
Robert Crosnoe is Associate Dean of Liberal Arts and Rapoport Centennial Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also is a faculty member in the Department of Psychology (by courtesy) and Population Research Center. Prior to arriving at Texas, he received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Crosnoe’s mixed-methods research explores the connections among health, human development, and education and the contributions of these connections to socioeconomic and immigration-related inequalities in American society. This work has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Science Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences, National Institute of Justice, William T. Grant Foundation, and Foundation for Child Development. A few of his book titles are Mexican Roots, American Schools: Helping Mexican Immigrant Children Succeed (Stanford University Press), Fitting In, Standing Out: Navigating the Social Challenges of High School to Get an Education (Cambridge University Press), Debating Early Child Care: The Relationship between Developmental Science and the Media (Cambridge University Press with Tama Leventhal), and Families Now: Diversity, Demography, and Development (Macmillan). Dr. Crosnoe is Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Collaborative on Development in Context, Past President of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and a trustee of the Population Reference Bureau.
Angela Dixon, Emory University
Angela Dixon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Emory University. Dr. Dixon’s research interests include race/ethnicity, colorism, inequality, and racial health inequities. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy with a concentration in demography from Princeton University and her B.A. in Psychology with a second major in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2020, Dr. Dixon was a David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Rachel Donnelly, Vanderbilt University
Rachel Donnelly is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on social determinants of health across the life course, with an emphasis on stress, work, and family relationships. In her research, she considers how disparate experiences by gender, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity shape mental and physical health outcomes. Her research has been published in journals such as Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science & Medicine, and Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences.
Christy Erving, Vanderbilt University
Dr. Christy L. Erving is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. Her research employs quantitative methods to explore how race, ethnicity, immigrant status, and gender interact to produce differentials in a variety of health outcomes. Using theories, concepts, and perspectives from several research areas, she is currently developing three related streams of research: 1) psychosocial factors that influence Black women’s physical and psychological health, 2) status distinctions in the relationship between physical and mental health, and 3) exploring what psychosocial factors explain Black-White differences in mental health. Her research has received funding from the American Sociological Association, Ford Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She received a B.A in Sociology and Hispanic Studies from Rice University. She earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Indiana University.
Karen Fingerman, UT Austin
Karen Fingerman is Professor of Human Development & Family Sciences at UT Austin. She studies adult development and aging and is currently the Director of the Texas Longevity Center at UT Austin. She also oversees the Graduate Portfolio in Aging & Health. Dr. Fingerman’s research focuses on social and emotional processes across adulthood, health and well-being.
Dr. Fingerman has conducted research and published over 160 papers and chapters regarding parents and children, in-law ties, romantic partners, grandparents and grandchildren, friends, and peripheral social ties. The National Institute on Aging funded her work on problematic social ties across the lifespan and The Family Exchanges Study, a longitudinal study involving middle-aged adults, their romantic partners, grown children and aging parents. The National Institute of Aging currently funds her Daily Experiences and Well-being Study, examining older adults’ social relationships, and daily emotional, cognitive and physical activity using ecologically valid methodologies including EMA surveys, actical measurements of physical activity and Electronically Activated Recorders (EAR). The Brookdale Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation Network on Transitions to Adulthood and the MacArthur Foundation Network on an Aging Society also have funded her work.
Bridget Goosby, UT Austin
Bridget Goosby is a Professor of Sociology and co-director of the LifeHD Health Disparities Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Goosby’s work examines the biosocial pathways through which racism and discrimination shape the chronic morbidity risk for racially marginalized groups via stress related physiologic alterations. She was recently elected a permanent fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of her research contributions to this area. Her most recent work, supported by the Spencer Foundation, seeks to assess the processes by which exposure to intersections of racism and sexism and coping strategies shape the health of Black women tenure track and tenured faculty.
Robert Hummer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Robert A. Hummer is the Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Fellow of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). In 2021, Hummer is served as the President of the Population Association of America (PAA), the 84th president in the history of the organization. Hummer’s research program is focused on the accurate description and more complete understanding of population health patterns and trends in the United States. He is currently serving as Director of the long-running National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which is funded by the National Institute on Aging and five co-funding institutes/offices (NICHD, NIMHD, NIDA, OBSSR, ODP). Now in its sixth wave, Add Health is one of the most innovative and well-utilized nationally representative cohort studies of Americans ever undertaken. Over his career to date, Professor Hummer has published more than 150 journal articles and book chapters in his areas of interest, with attention to health disparities both during infancy/childhood as well as across the adult life course. He is also the recent co-author of Population Health in America (University of California Press, 2019, with Erin R. Hamilton).
Hui Liu, Michigan State University
Hui (Cathy) Liu is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Family and Population Health (FPH) Laboratory at Michigan State University. Before joining MSU in 2008, she received her B.A. and M.A. in economics from Nankai University, China, her M.S. in Statistics, and Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research is broadly guided by the aging and life course perspective to study social determinants of population health. Specifically, Dr. Liu has focused on using innovative quantitative methods to develop, test, and promote scientific understanding of processes of marriage, family and, more broadly, social relationships that impact, and are impacted by, health and well-being over the life course. Her other scholarly interests include LGBTQ+ health, sexuality, bio-demography of aging, cognitive health and quantitative methodologies.
Toni Miles, University of Georgia
Dr. Miles’ work is focused on the population health effects of the deaths of friends and family members and it is used by advocacy groups including the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving and the Culture Change Network of Georgia. In 2020, she completed the first ever state-wide survey of new bereavement in Georgia. Her team has also created and disseminated a guide for Best Practices in Bereavement Care to all nursing homes, personal care homes, and assisted living sites in Georgia during the pandemic. In 2012, she published the book – Health Reform and Disparities: History, Hype, Hope. It is an analysis of the Affordable Care Act’s potential to reduce disparities in access to health care. Miles has more than 200 publications on the topics of public health, bereavement, and chronic diseases. She has recent interviews on the topic of public health and bereavement for Scott Tang on Here & Now NPR, Allison Gilbert of the New York Times, and Judith Graham of Kaiser Health News. She is a fellow in both the Gerontological Society of America and the American Association of Public Health.
(NLSY79) and is a co-investigator on or advisor to several other national surveys of aging, including Midlife in the United States (MIDUS).
Joyal Mulheron, Evermore
Ms. Mulheron spent 15+ years advising high-ranking politicians, including former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former First Lady Michelle Obama, and translating basic science into public policy. She has enjoyed leading major initiatives for the National Governors Association, the National Academies of Science and the American Cancer Society. She holds a Masters in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University and degrees in Biochemistry and English from Virginia Tech. After a series of high-profile death events and the death of her daughter, Ms. Mulheron founded Evermore to change policy, advance research and make the world a more livable place for bereaved families.
Debra Umberson, UT Austin
Debra Umberson is Professor of Sociology and founding Director of the Center on Aging and Population Sciences (CAPS) at the University of Texas at Austin. CAPS is one of 13 U.S. Centers on the Demography & Economics of Aging supported by the National Institute on Aging. Her research focuses on social factors that influence population health with an emphasis on aging and life course change; stress and social ties; and gender, sexuality, race, and ethnic variation in health. Her current research, supported by the National Institute on Aging, focuses on racial/ethnic differences in exposure to the death of family members across the life course and the implications for long-term health and mortality disparities. Dr. Umberson has served as editor of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Chair of the Mental Health, Marriage and Family, and Medical Sociology Sections of the American Sociological Association, and as Vice President of the Association of Population Centers. She is an elected Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, and the recipient of several career awards from the American Sociological Association including the 2020 Leo G. Reeder Award for Distinguished Contributions to Medical Sociology, the 2020 Family Section’s Distinguished Career Award, the 2016 Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health, and the 2015 Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award for work on Aging and the Life Course.
Ashton Verdery, Penn State University
Ashton Verdery is a sociologist and demographer whose research focuses on the intersection of population processes and social and family networks: how and why people are socially connected to each other and the consequences of those connections for individual and population health. In his research, he is particularly interested in social change, racial and ethnic disparities, and cross-national comparisons of health and family phenomena. He obtained his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2015 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Abby Weitzman, UT-Austin
Dr. Abigail Weitzman is a sociologist and demographer interested in the social psychological processes underpinning demographic phenomenon. Specifically, her research examines how evolving demographic and social circumstances shape what people want and expect, and in turn, how their desires and expectations affect their demographic decisions and behaviors. Her work has been generously funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, in addition to funding from the Population Research Center and Center on Aging and Population Studies at the University of Texas.
