Research
We specialize in the study of social inequality. More specifically, our faculty focus on community and urban sociology, health and medicine, race and ethnicity, and gender. We encourage prospective graduate students interested in these issues to join us! Our urban location and proximity to six major hospitals make UC an ideal place to study urban and health issues, and Sociologists for Women in Society have consistently awarded us their seal of approval for gender scholarship.
The intellectual hub of the department is the Kunz Center for Social Research, an endowed center located within and designated to support the research mission of the department. It provides research funding for faculty and graduate students, and provides an intellectual commons for faculty and students across the university with research interests in urban and race, family and gender, and health issues.
- Jeffrey M. Timberlake has a multi-year grant from the Ohio Colleges of Medicine’s Government Resource Center at the Ohio State University to study the health and health care access of Ohio’s children and adolescents.
- Jeffrey M. Timberlake received a grant from National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to study the mental health and health care access of crop farmworkers in the United States.
- Danielle Bessett has a multi-year grant from the Kentucky health Justice Network’s society of family planning on inequities in abortion access.
- Danielle Bessett has a multi-year grant from the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network to study reproductive health care in Ohio and the region.
- Okuwobi, Oneya Fennell. 2025. Who Pays for Diversity? Why Programs Fail at RacialEquity and What to Do About It?. University of California Press.
- Brown, Letisha Engracia Cardoso. 2025. Say Her Name: Centering Black Feminism and Black Women in Sport. Rutgers University Press.
- Carlton-Ford, Steve. 2024. Legacies of Injustice: The African Slave Trade, Colonialism, and Today’s Human Rights. Routledge.
- Sorrels, Katherine, Vanessa Carbonell, Danielle Bessett, Lora Anderson, Edward Wallace, and Michelle L. McGowan, editors. 2023. Ohio Under COVID. University of Michigan Press.
- Casanova, Erynn Masi. 2022. La desigualdad a domicilio: El trabajo remunerado del hogar en el Ecuador contemporáneo. FLACSO Ecuador.
- Casanova, Erynn Masi. 2019. Dust and Dignity: Domestic Employment in Contemporary Ecuador.
- du Toit, David and Erynn Masi de Casanova. 2025. “Polishing the Pearl of the Pacific and the City of Gold: Paid Domestic Work in Guayaquil, Ecuador and Johannesburg, South Africa.” Women’s Studies International Forum 109. DOI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027753952 5000044?via%3Dihub.
- Baiocchi, María Lis, Cati Coe, Friederike Fleischer, Brandon Hunter-Pazzara, Erynn Masi de Casanova, Dario Valles. 2025. “Roundtable Discussion: Domestic Worker Organizing in Latin America and Beyond.” Anthropology of Work Review. 45(2): 130- 138.
- Letisha Brown published an op-ed on the return of WNBA player Britney Griner to the U.S. in First and Pen.
- Arti Sandhu, book chapter: 'Fashion for a Cause: Crafting an Image of Authenticity and Wellbeing in Indian Fashion Magazines' published in Insights on Fashion Journalism, edited By Rosie Findlay, Johannes Reponen (Routledge)
- Cynthia Beavin, article: Frohwirth, Lori, Megan L. Kavanaugh, Ayana Douglas-Hall, Katrina MacFarlane, and Cynthia Beavin. 2022. “Access to Preferred Contraceptive Strategies in Iowa: A Longitudinal Qualitative Study of Effects of Shifts in Policy and Healthcare Contexts.” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 33(3):1494–1518.
- Jeremy Brenner-Levoy, article: Rivlin, Katherine; Jeremy Brenner-Levoy; Tamika Odum; Zoe Muzyczka; Alison H. Norris; Abigail Norris Turner; and Danielle Bessett. "Provider mistrust and telemedicine abortion preferences among patients in Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky." Telemedicine and e-Health.
- Kierra N. Toney, and Derrick R. Brooms. "‘We’re not taught the full story’: Black students’ mistrust of secondary school US history curricula." Race Ethnicity and Education (2025): 1-20.
- Michael Parrish. 2022. Whiteness interrupted: white teachers and racial identity in predominately Black schools by Marcus Bell. [Book Review] Ethnic and Racial Studies.
- Zoe Muzyczka, Katherine Rivlin; Jeremy Brenner-Levoy; Tamika Odum; Zoe Muzyczka; Alison H. Norris; Abigail Norris Turner; and Danielle Bessett. "Provider mistrust and telemedicine abortion preferences among patients in Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky." Telemedicine and e-Health.
- Kierra Toney received a Taft Dissertation Fellowship for 2023-2024.
- Michael Parrish received a Taft Dissertation Fellowship for 2023-2024.
- Jeff Timberlake was elected Chair of the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association for 2023-2024
- Letisha Brown won a 2023-2024 Race B4 Social Media Fellowship, funded by the Mellon Foundation
- Erynn Masi de Casanova won the 2023 Faculty-Faculty Research Mentoring Award from the UC College of Arts & Sciences
- Danielle Bessett won the 2021 Mentor Award from the Society of Family Planning