Health, Population and the Life Course
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Bliss, Rina
- Rina Bliss
- Associate Professor
- Ph.D. New School for Social Research
- Email: catherine.bliss@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall
- Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Rina Bliss is Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. She is an expert on the social significance of emerging genetic sciences and the award-winning author Rethinking Intelligence (HarperCollins), Race Decoded (Stanford University Press) and Social by Nature (Stanford University Press), as well as the forthcoming What’s Real About Race? Untangling Science, Genetics, and Society (W.W. Norton, 2025). She is a member of the Human Genome Synthesis Project, an affiliate of UCSF and the UC Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, and a consultant to public institutions like the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and PBS’s Finding Your Roots.
With a drive to sequence people for genetic markers associated with IQ, cutting-edge research into how our genes respond to our environments shows us that hacking our DNA might not actually boost our brains. In Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential, Dr. Bliss explores what we should know about the new science of intelligence and how best to use that knowledge to nurture your intelligence, whether it be in the workplace, in our education systems, or at home.
In What’s Real About Race? Untangling Science, Genetics, and Society, Dr. Bliss shares a myth-busting exploration of human diversity and genetics proving that race isn’t genetic but it is nonetheless real. Dr. Bliss shows how the misnomers, fictions, and lies we tell ourselves deeply impact almost every part of our lives. She provides a vision for how we as a society can counteract harmful stereotypes and injustices to move beyond the misconception toward a more equitable way of life.
Dr. Bliss speaks to audiences all over the world about the politics of health, technology, education, and equality, presenting at organizations such as the EU European Molecular Biology Lab, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and National Human Genome Research Institute. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, ABC News, and in international news outlets like East Asia Daily, German Public Broadcasting, and La Presse.
Dr. Bliss holds a PhD in Sociology from the New School for Social Research, has held Postdoctoral Fellowships at Brown University BioMed and the Cogut Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and has received grants and fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation, among others.
- In the Public Eye:
- ABC News: ‘Intelligence isn’t genetic’: Scholar and author on reassessing brilliance
- Katie Couric Media: Intelligence isn't genetic: The problem with testing
- Washington Post: AI can’t teach children to learn. What’s missing?
- Big Think: Parents, instill in your children a “growth mindset” to help them succeed in school and beyond
- Faculty Article(s):
- Ambiguity and Scientific Authority: Population Classification in Genomic Science
- Conceptualizing Race in the Genomic Age
- Ambiguity and Scientific Authority: Population Classification in Genomic Science
- Faculty Bookshelf:
- Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice
- Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential
- Social by Nature: The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics
- What’s Real About Race? Untangling Science, Genetics, and Society
- Program Areas:
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
- Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
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What’s Real About Race? Untangling Science, Genetics, and Society
W.W. Norton , 2025
Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential
HarperCollins , 2023
Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice
Stanford University Press , 2012
Social by Nature: The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics
Stanford University Press , 2018
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Bzostek, Sharon
- Sharon Bzostek
- Associate Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education
- Ph.D. Princeton University, 2009
- Email: s.bzostek@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 135
- Curriculum Vitae
Sharon Bzostek (Ph.D., Princeton University, 2009) is an associate professor of sociology and Senior Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education at the School of Arts and Sciences. She is a social demographer particularly interested in recent changes in family demography and their consequences for child and family well-being, as well as social disparities in health and health care.
Prior to joining the department, Professor Bzostek was a postdoctoral fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at Harvard University. She is currently working on projects related to mothers’ re-partnering after a non-marital birth, better understanding survey respondents’ self-rated health, comparing parent and child reports about children's lives, and the effects of mixed health insurance coverage within families on children’s health care access and utilization. Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Demography, Social Forces, Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Science and Medicine, and Health Affairs.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Family Structure Experiences and Child Socioemotional Development during the First Nine Years of Life: Examining Heterogeneity by Family Structure at Birth
- Public Health Insurance and Health Care Utilization for Children in Immigrant Families
- Family Structure Experiences and Child Socioemotional Development during the First Nine Years of Life: Examining Heterogeneity by Family Structure at Birth
- Program Areas:
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
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Kempner, Joanna
- Joanna Kempner
- Associate Professor
- Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2004
- Email: jkempner@sociology.rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 134
- Personal Website
- Twitter: joannakempner
- Curriculum Vitae
- Google Scholar
Joanna Kempner, associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University, is an award-winning sociologist of science, medicine, and inequality, and the author of Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine (Hachette Books 2024) and Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health (Chicago 2014). Kempner’s research gives voice to those without power and asks challenging questions about how medicine talks about, understands, and makes policies for those it serves.
Kempner has held visiting positions and fellowships at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan, and has served on multiple editorial boards and in leadership positions across academia and within headache advocacy. Her research appears in top journals across multiple disciplines, including Science, PLoS Medicine, Neurology, and Social Science & Medicine and is often featured in the media. You can learn more about Joanna Kempner at www.joannakempner.com.
- In the Public Eye:
- The Promise and Future of Psychedelics, The Pulse. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/01/1196552850/promise-of-psychedelics
- Host Maiken Scott interviews Joanna Kempner about Clusterbusters, a patient group that developed a psychedelic protocol to treat cluster headache. “How people with cluster headache become unexpected pioneers,” The Microdose, June 10, 2024. https://substack.com/home/post/p-145276454
- Michael Pollan’s substack, The Microdose, ran an excerpt of Psychedelic Outlaws, which explains the rise of psychedelic medicine through the lens of an unexpected group of pioneers: people desperate to find a treatment for cluster headache, one of the most excruciating diseases in the world.
- A documentary film entitled Out of My Head that explores migraine, featuring Kempner’s research alongside an intimate portrayal of her life with migraine.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Collective self-experimentation in patient-led research: How online health communities foster innovation
- Standards Without Labs: Drug Development in the Psychedelic Underground.
- Collective self-experimentation in patient-led research: How online health communities foster innovation
- Faculty Bookshelf:
- Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health
- Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
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Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine
Hachette Books , 2024
Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health
Chicago , 2014
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Lee, Catherine
- Catherine Lee
- Associate Professor
- Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, 2003
- Email: clee@sociology.rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 141
- Personal Website
- Phone: 848-932-7807
- Curriculum Vitae
Catherine Lee is associate professor of sociology and faculty associate at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research. As a political sociologist, she examines how meanings of race and ethnicity shape social relations and inequalities across three critical sites: immigration; science and medicine; and law and society. Catherine is the author of Fictive Kinship: Family Reunification and the Meaning of Race and Nation in American Immigration (2013, Russell Sage) and co-editor of Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History (2012, Rutgers University Press). Her current projects include an investigation of the use of DNA testing in family reunification cases in the United States and Europe and of the meaning of diversity in U.S. biomedicine given shifting ethnic and racial demographics and the rise of multiraciality due to increased immigration.
- In the Public Eye:
- Discusses the role of families in U.S. immigration policies, past and present.
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
- Politics and Social Movements
- Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
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Lei, Lei
- Lei Lei
- Associate Professor
- Ph.D. University at Albany-SUNY
- Email: llei@sociology.rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 039
- Curriculum Vitae
Lei earned her Ph.D. degree in sociology at the University at Albany-SUNY in 2016. Lei's research and teaching interests include health, family, demography, and urban sociology. She teaches Introduction to Statistics in Sociology, Global Health, Statistical Methods in Sociology II, and Multilevel and Longitudinal Data Analysis.
Her research focuses on social determinants of health, family dynamics, and social inequality in different societies, including China, India, and the US. One line of her research seeks to understand how social factors, such as residential contexts, working conditions, and family dynamics, get under the skin to produce and perpetuate health inequalities. She has published articles examining how neighborhood environments influence educational achievement, children’s health and nutrition, and adults’ health. Currently, she employs longitudinal data from the Indian Human Development Survey to analyze how male outmigration influences the health of left-behind wives and children in India.
Another strand of her research investigates the determinants and consequences of young adults' prolonged dependence on parents. She examines the role of gender, race, class, life-course events, and non-standard employment in determining the timing of home-leaving and home-returning among young adults in the US. More recently, she investigates the impact of coresidence with parents on young adults' demographic behaviors, including residential mobility, romantic relationships, and sexual activities.
To read her recent publications, please visit her Google Scholar page.
- Faculty Article(s):
- The Effect of Neighborhoods on Children’s Educational Achievement in China: Exploring Mediating Mechanisms
- The Impact of Community Context on Children’s Health and Nutritional Status in China
- The Effect of Neighborhoods on Children’s Educational Achievement in China: Exploring Mediating Mechanisms
- Program Areas:
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
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Litt, Jacquelyn
- Jacquelyn Litt
- Professor
- Ph.D. Sociology. University of Pennsylvania, 1988
- Email: jacquelyn.litt@rutgers.edu
Jacquelyn Litt is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is currently writing a book, Women of Katrina: Crossing Borders, Weaving Networks, and Taking Care which documents the strategies of survival women took to disaster recovery in the Katrina Diaspora. She is co-chair, with Kai Erikson, of the Social Science Research Council Network on Persons Displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Her primary research has been on motherhood, carework, and inequality, and she has many articles and two books on the topic: Medicalized Motherhood: Perspectives from the Lives of African American and Jewish Mothers (Rutgers University Press 2000), which was cited by the race, gender, and class section of the ASA for outstanding scholarship in race, class, and gender, and Global Perspectives on Gender and Carework, with Mary Zimmerman and Christine Bose (Stanford University Press 2006). She was also the founding Department Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies (2005-2011) and Principal Investigator (2007-2010) of “Mizzou ADVANCE,” a $500,00 NSF PAID/ADVANCE award to promote the status of women faculty in STEM at the University of Missouri. From this project she has published numerous articles on mentoring tenured faculty and established new mentoring programs at numerous universities. She serves as a consultant to NSF ADVANCE grants for faculty women in STEM.
- Program Areas:
- Environment and Sustainability
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
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MacKendrick, Norah
- Norah MacKendrick
- ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
- Ph.D. University of Toronto, 2011
- Email: norah.mackendrick@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, Room 107
- Personal Website
- Twitter: @nmackend
- Curriculum Vitae
- Google Scholar
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Norah MacKendrick’s research falls within the fields of environmental sociology, medical sociology, gender, food studies, science and technology studies, and consumer studies. From 2020-23 served as Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Environmental Sociology. In 2023, she became co-editor of Rutgers University Press’s award-winning “Nature, Society, and Culture” book series.
MacKendrick is the author of Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics, which identifies the rise of “precautionary consumption” in the United States. She finds that chemical body burdens are the consequence of decades of regulatory failure to properly assess the health consequences of environmental chemicals. The burden of addressing this failure has fallen to women and mothers who feel responsible for protecting their children from exposure to chemicals, and do so through cooking, grocery shopping, and management of the household. The book reveals how discourses of maternal responsibility and consumer empowerment circulate within the campaigns of environmental health advocacy groups, and as well as through the retail landscape for organic foods and ‘green’ products, particularly Whole Foods Market.
Better Safe Than Sorry won the Best First Book Award from the Association for the Study of Food & Society (2019), and the Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award from the Environmental Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (2020).
In her other research, MacKendrick has examined the intersections of risk, individualization, and modern motherhood, as well as the dynamics of non-toxic consumption, “foodscapes” and science activism. Her research has been published in Gender & Society, Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Social Science & Medicine, Sociological Forum, Socius, Science Advances, Journal of Consumer Culture, Food, Culture and Society, Contexts, and Gastronomica.
MacKendrick is working on several new projects. One explores the social construction of hormones as risky technologies and substances essential for realizing wellness and selfhood. Another examines air quality and heat stress under climate change. A third, with Dr. Edmée Ballif, examines the normative arguments surrounding the place of plant milks in the diets of children and adults in Switzerland and the United States.
- In the Public Eye:
- Time Magazine, “You Don’t Need to Balance Your Hormones” May 9, 2023
- MacKendrick’s editorial in The Guardian: Your fast food wrappers contain toxic chemicals. Why is that allowed?
- MacKendrick’s book Better Safe Than Sorry featured in the Washington Post, “Scientists know plastics are dangerous. Why won’t the government say so?” September 12, 2018
- Interviewed on National Public Radio, (Madison, WI). Should We Be More Worried About Chemicals in Food and Consumer Products? June 12, 2018
- Faculty Article(s):
- “Leave No Stone Unturned”: Sustainable Belonging and Desirable Futures of African American Food Imaginaries
- Like a Finely-Oiled Machine: Self-Help and the Elusive Goal of Hormone Balance
- “Leave No Stone Unturned”: Sustainable Belonging and Desirable Futures of African American Food Imaginaries
- Faculty Bookshelf:
- Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Environment and Sustainability
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
- Politics and Social Movements
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Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics
University of California Press , 2018
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Mouzon, Dawne M.
- Dawne M. Mouzon
- Associate Professor
- Email: dawne.mouzon@rutgers.edu
- Curriculum Vitae
Ph.D., Rutgers University, 2010
Dr. Dawne Marie Mouzon, Associate Professor of Sociology, engages in research that seeks to identify and explain risk and protective factors for the physical and mental health of populations of African descent. Specifically, she investigates the interplay between social relationships, psychosocial stressors, resilience, and health across the life course among Black Americans. Her early work focused on testing presumed protective factors to explain “the Black-White mental health paradox”, or the unexpected finding that Black Americans generally exhibit better mental health outcomes than Whites despite their lower socioeconomic standing and greater exposure to discrimination. She since built upon this work by investigating how these risk and protective factors, along with status characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, and nativity status, shape mental health risk among African American and Afro-Caribbean populations in the United States.
Her current research program focuses on identifying adaptive coping resources and strategies African Americans use in the face of chronic stress and racial discrimination, with a focus on gender differences in these processes. Another arm of her research investigates the “marriage squeeze” among Black Americans, including preference for (and barriers to) marriage, romantic relationships, and opportunities for parenthood.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Everyday Discrimination Typologies Among Older African Americans: Gender and Socioeconomic Status
- Gender differences in marriage, romantic involvement, and desire for romantic involvement among older African Americans
- Religious Involvement and the Black–White Paradox in Mental Health
- Everyday Discrimination Typologies Among Older African Americans: Gender and Socioeconomic Status
- Program Areas:
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
- Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
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Phillips, Julie
- Julie Phillips
- Professor
- Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 1998
- Email: julie.phillips@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 133
- Curriculum Vitae
Julie Phillips, Professor of Sociology, is a social demographer with broad interests in mortality, health, immigration, and crime, and the ways in which structural features of society influence those outcomes. Her recent research examines the sharp increases in U.S. suicide rates since 2000, focusing on sociocultural and demographic explanations for how and why suicide risk varies across the life course, over time, and among birth cohorts. Her present work seeks to understand the mental health crisis and rising rates of suicidal behavior among American youth.
She writes for a variety of audiences, publishing in journals such as Demography, Social Science and Medicine, Health Affairs, and American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Her work has been supported by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the National Institute for Mental Health and the National Science Foundation, and featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio among other outlets. She served as a member of the New Jersey Youth Suicide Prevention Advisory Council from 2011 to 2016, and she is currently an advisor for the Scientific Council for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Dr. Phillips teaches courses in population health, demography, research methods, and statistics.
- In the Public Eye:
- Penned an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “The Dangerous Shifting Cultural Narratives around Suicide” Sunday, March 24, 2019.
- Research featured in the New York Times, “How Suicide Quietly Morphed into a Public Health Crisis”, June 8, 2018.
- Interviewed on NPR’s Hidden Brain about American Masculinity and Loneliness, March 19, 2018.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Beliefs about Suicide Acceptability in the United States: How do they Affect Suicide Mortality?
- Identifying latent themes in suicide among black and white adolescents and young adults using the National Violent Death Reporting System, 2013–2019
- Beliefs about Suicide Acceptability in the United States: How do they Affect Suicide Mortality?
- Program Areas:
- Crime and Social Control
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
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Springer, Kristen W.
- Kristen W. Springer
- Associate Professor
- Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006
- Email: kspringer@sociology.rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 040
- Curriculum Vitae
Kristen W. Springer is Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006; MA, Yale University, 2000; MPH, Emory University, 1997; BS, University of California at Santa Cruz).
Professor Springer’s scholarship focuses broadly on gender and health, prioritizing the intersection of social and biological influences. Her current research explores how the anti-transgender legislative climate harms health access for transgender youth, with a particular focus on how youth of color are affected. Other recent areas of research include: 1) experimental studies of biosocial reactions to masculinity threats; 2) conceptual and methodological interventions for how to best research gender and health using biosocial and intersectional frameworks; and 3) quantitative analyses on masculinity ideals, socioeconomic status, marriage, and men’s health. She has published in journals including American Journal of Sociology, American Journal of Public Health, Gender & Society, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Science & Medicine, and Social Science Research. Professor Springer’s research has also been featured in national and international news sources including ABC News, LA Times, The New York Times, US News & World Report, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. She teaches classes on research methods, family, gender, and biosociology.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Beyond a catalogue of differences: A theoretical frame and good practice guidelines for researching sex/gender in human health
- Program Areas:
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine