Social Inequality, Work, Education, Mobilization, and Culture.  Current research includes the focus on race and gender discrimination and bullying at work, educational inequality and the first-generation college experience, and collective behavior, power, and belief.

 I was intrigued from my very first sociology course as an undergraduate with ways in which inequality is reproduced and how people interpret and are impacted by inequality. In my work, I have followed through on such interests by engaging in numerous projects on inequality in employment, politics, and education, and using a diversity of methods to get at inequality’s extent and the mechanisms and processes undergirding it.  How is inequality enacted, reproduced, and legitimated by those in power? In what ways do structure and action intersect to create inequality? What role does culture and discourse play in the legitimating and making such inequalities seem acceptable; and, how do subordinated groups challenge, resist, or rectify the inequalities they face? These questions are at the core of my work.