University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Professor of Psychology (By Courtesy)
About
I am an applied feminist psychologist and social issues researcher. My research examines how social institutions that purport to help, including science, education, health care, and medicine, (re)produce harm. I use quantitative and qualitative methods to explore complex social inequalities at the intersection of race, gender/sex, and sexuality. My scholarship has sought to elaborate how intersectionality can be responsibly used as a tool for social science and social justice. I have longstanding interest in the ways beliefs about social categories and scientific knowledge are deployed in social movements. Much of my current work uses the reproductive justice framework to understand how young people in the United States negotiate reproductive health care and sexual politics in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision. I am currently working on the third edition of my book Intersectionality: Foundations and Frontiers (Routledge), as well as a book manuscript under contract with Cambridge University Press titled The “Born This Way” Wars: Sexuality, Science, and the Future of Equality. I am a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and former President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Before coming to UM, I was Professor of Psychology and the inaugural Divisional Dean for Social Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Students interested in working in my lab, the Social Action Research Team, should contact me directly.
Fields of study:
- Intersectionality
- LGBTQ+ issues
- Race and racism
- Reproductive justice
- Science and technology studies
