Placements

At Vanderbilt, we are dedicated to training the next generation of scholars to join the professoriate. Our Ph.D.’s have earned tenure-track positions at schools such as Rutgers University, Boston College, University of Connecticut, University of Arkansas, Ohio State, and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In addition, our graduates have been awarded postdoctoral fellowships at major research institutes like the Duke University Aging Center and the Brown University Population Studies and Training Center.

Adam Schoenbachler ’25

Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University

Adam’s research seeks to build and extend theory about how work is organized, experienced, and contested, with particular attention to labor processes and worker wellbeing in creative and service industries. Working with Dr. Daniel Cornfield, Adam learned to apply and synthesize a diverse set of theoretical frameworks from the sociology of work and organizations, cultural sociology, and medical sociology. He matches this theoretical breadth with methodological range, employing ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, and quantitative survey methods – the latter honed through his collaborations with Rachel Donnelly on the health and wellbeing of low-wage and part-time workers. During his doctoral training, Adam was a Visiting Research Affiliate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan, and he is currently a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Global Labor and Work at Cornell University’s ILR School, where he applies the skills and knowledge accumulated at Vanderbilt to the study of technological change, automation, and worker voice in the video games and telecom industries.

Adviser: Daniel B. Cornfield

Monisola Vaughan Smith ’25

Chancey Herbolsheimer ’24

Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University

I am currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Texas Tech University. I think about the ways in which law and medicine define social problems and how institutional logics shape organizational response. I am especially interested in reproductive health and decision-making. My body of work examines the criminalization of pregnancy at the state level, and its implications on the health and well-being of pregnant people. My analysis of social policy and prenatal care utilization was recently published in SSM-Population Health. My subsequent dissertation research focused on provider occupational enactment and activism in substance-use treatment for pregnant people.

My other published work on policy-related questions may be found in Sociological Forum, American Behavioral Scientist, International Journal of Transgender Health, and LGBTQ+ Family: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Adviser: Daniel B. Cornfield

 Philip J. Pettis ’23

Assistant Professor at Michigan State University

Philip’s research examines how sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, gender, age, and SES intersect to shape social, economic, and health inequalities. Under the tutelage of Dr. Lijun Song, Philip learned to apply a diverse set of theoretical frameworks including race/ethnicity studies, sexualities studies, medical sociology, and social psychology. He matches his theoretical diversity with methodological breadth, employing social network analysis, survey methods, and in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation. In his position as assistant professor at Michigan State University, he will apply what the skills and knowledge accumulated at Vanderbilt to the thematic area of Sexual and Gender Minority Health Research at MSU.

Adviser: Lijun Song

Darwin Baluran ’22

Assistant Professor at Washington University

Professor Baluran’s research aims to theoretically unpack and empirically analyze how racialization and racism differentially harm marginalized communities. He utilizes a variety of methods, from formal demography to in-depth interviews, to uncover mechanisms that reproduce racial inequality across various domains of social life, from criminal legal contact to health. He currently focuses on three streams of research: (1) race and criminal legal outcomes; (2) the health impacts of racialization and racism; and (3) the intersection of racialization, criminal legal contact and health. His work has been published in Demography, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, The British Journal of Criminology, Population Research and Policy Review, among others.

Adviser: Rachel Donnelly

Dasom Lee ’21

Associate Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Dasom Lee is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy at KAIST. Before her appointment at KAIST, she held a tenured post as Assistant Professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Her research uses quantitative methods to study how publics and institutions respond to contested energy and climate technologies. Her work spans the politics of energy and climate, environmental justice in the energy transition, and the governance of emerging technologies – from solar geoengineering and renewable energy to the regulation of data centers. A recurring theme across her studies is showing how patterns that appear settled at an aggregate level fracture once the data are disaggregated, revealing structure that coarse measures and categories conceal. Her research is marked by its interdisciplinarity and by an international outlook, forged through sustained collaborations with colleagues across Europe and North America.

Adviser: David Hess

Lacee Satcher ’21

Assistant Professor at Boston College

Lacee Satcher is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at Boston College. Her primary research interests include race/ethnicity, health & place, and environmental justice. Other interests include place & inequality, social psychology of health, and urban sociology. Her most recent work focuses on the race-environment-health connection, specifically how various individual social identities/social locations structure our relations with and within space and place to shape health outcomes, health experiences, and place attachment. Her conceptualization of these relations include the term ‘multiply-deserted areas’ which describes the co-occurring resource scarcity in urban, Black neighborhoods resulting from processes of environmental racism and racial capitalism.

Adviser: David Hess and Daniel B. Cornfield

Cleothia Frazier ’21

Assistant Professor at Penn State University

Cleothia Frazier is an assistant professor of Sociology and Demography at Penn State. She is also a faculty co-fund at the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI). Her research focuses on understanding heterogeneity in health and aging processes across the life course, especially among older adults. Frazier’s research interests include aging and life course, medical sociology, sleep health, race/ethnicity, mental health, and the social determinants of health. She is developing three lines of inquiry: 1) the social determinants of sleep health; 2) the neighborhood environment, health, and aging; and 3) the effects of stress exposure on physical and mental health across the life course (young adults, midlife, later life). Her work has appeared in journals such as Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Society and Mental Health, and American Journal of Epidemiology.

Adviser: Rachel Donnelly

RACHEL MCKANE ’20

Assistant Professor at Brandeis University

Rachel’s research addresses questions at the intersection of structural inequality, urban development, and environmental change. At Vanderbilt, Rachel studied environmental justice and environmental sociology under Dr. David Hess and participated in numerous interdisciplinary collaborations. After graduation, they accepted a position as a post-doctoral research associate at Brown University in the Population Studies and Training Center. In their new position at Brandeis University as the Jack Meyerhoff Chair of American Environmental Studies, they will continue to study environmental (in)justice and processes of urban change rooted in historic structural inequality, uneven development, and racial capitalism. They will also expand their work on mutual aid as an adaptive strategy for building community resilience in the era of climate change.

Reflecting on their time at Vanderbilt, Rachel said, “I received incredible mentorship and support from Dr. David Hess and rigorous methodological training from folks in the Sociology Department and beyond.”

Adviser: David Hess

Ryan Talbert ’20

Assistant Professor at University of Connecticut

While at Vanderbilt, Ryan studied the intersection of health and race under Dr. Christie-Mizell, learning to utilize quantitative methods and insights from multiple theoretical perspectives including the stress process model, life course theory, and intersectionality. In his position as assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, he has applied what he learned at Vanderbilt and developed a robust research agenda. An example of the type of research Ryan engages in is his work on the mental health significance of proximity to public Confederate monuments, and the long-term health effects of Ku Klux Klan terrorism on communities.

When we asked Ryan what he found most useful about his time here, he said, “the rigorous, unparalleled, and hands-on mentoring I received. The low student/faculty ratio is indicative of Vanderbilt’s approach to mentorship.”

Adviser: André Christie-Mizell

Rachel Skaggs ’18

Associate Professor at The Ohio State University

Rachel Skaggs holds the Lawrence and Isabel Barnett Professorship of Arts Management as associate professor at The Ohio State University. I am a member of Ohio State’s department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy, where I use a sociological lens in my research and teaching about the role of art in society. Reflecting my interest in arts entrepreneurship, I am also affiliated faculty with the Barnett Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise and hold a courtesy appointment in the department of sociology.

Adviser: Daniel B. Cornfield

Quan D. Mai ’18

Associate Professor at Rutgers University-New Brunswick

While at Vanderbilt, Quan studied social movements under Dr. Isaac, and work and occupations under Dr. Cornfield, while specializing advanced quantitative methods. At Rutgers University he has applied what he learned at Vanderbilt to a research agenda that explores how a range of social relations—including racial relations, employment relations, state regulatory capacity, and social movements—combine in the economy, polity, and urban spaces to influence processes of social stratification.

Quan remembers his time at Vanderbilt fondly. He told us, “I can honestly say that I spent some of the best years of my life being a graduate student in Garland Hall. The mentorship that I received is unparalleled, and I will be forever indebted to my mentors at Vandy. They not only took me under their wings but also led by examples in showing me how to operate as a respected scholar, caring teacher, generous mentor, collegial community-member, and kind human being.”

Advisers: Larry Isaac and Dan Cornfield

Jonathan S. Coley ’16

Associate Professor at Oklahoma State University

Dr. Jonathan Coley  is Associate Professor of Sociology and Graduate Program Director for the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. He is also Editor-in-Chief of The Sociological Quarterly.

Dr. Coley’s research interests include social movements, politics, religion, education, work, gender and sexuality, and race and ethnicity. His current lines of research focus on LGBTQ activism and policies within religious institutions, student organizations and centers at U.S. colleges and universities, occupational activism among professional workers, and local-level religion-state relations in the United States. His past work examined biography and history in the Nashville civil rights movement, culture and the early U.S. labor movement, and environmental policymaking in the United States.

Adviser: Daniel B. Cornfield and David Hess

Kate Pride Brown ’15

Associate Professor at Georgia Tech

Kate Pride Brown is an environmental and political sociologist whose research focuses on a range of issues, including environmental activism in Russia and conservation policy in the United States. She received her doctorate from Vanderbilt University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment. Her book, Saving the Sacred Sea: The Power of Civil Society in an Age of Authoritarianism and Globalization (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines the conflict between local and transnational environmentalists, multinational corporations, and the Russian government over the future of Lake Baikal, the largest, deepest and oldest freshwater lake on Earth. Dr. Brown has also published research on water and energy politics and policy in the United States. Among other honors, she has received a Fulbright Fellowship, a Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State, and funding from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. Her research has appeared in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Energy Research and Social Science, Environmental Politics, Environmental Sociology, Ethnography, Memory Studies, Nature and Culture, Research in Political Sociology, Social Movement Studies, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, Water Policy and WIREs Water.

Adviser: David Hess