Emily is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department at Indiana University. Her research and teaching interests include medical sociology, work and organizations, and social networks. Her dissertation draws on comparative ethnography across two medical organizations and over 90 in-depth interviews to understand how mid-status professionals navigate a healthcare system that was built to privilege doctors. Emily examines how the dual constraints of professional status and organizational regulations impact workers’ autonomy and the strategies of resistance these workers perform to ensure quality patient care.

Emily’s research has been recognized by the American Sociological Association, including a 2023 Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG), and she was a 2023-24 a Population Reference Bureau (PRB) U.S. Policy Communications Training Program Fellow. Her research has been published in the Society and Mental Health, Social Psychology Quarterly, Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.

To learn more about her ongoing work, visit my Current Research section.

Upcoming Presentations

“Gendered Legitimacy in the Sick Role: A Survey Experiment of Gender-typed Head Pain.” (with Caroline Brooks) Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) Annual Meeting: Montreal, Canada. August 2024.

“Precarity in Safety Net Healthcare: Structural Inequalities at the Systems Level.” (with Janet Shim, Tessa Nápoles, and Brea Perry) American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting: Montreal, Canada. August 2024.

“Cultivating, Managing, and Leveraging Authority: How Allied Health Professionals Negotiate Authority to Provide Patient Care.” American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting: Montreal, Canada. August 2024.