News — WASHINGTON, DC— Adia Harvey Wingfield, Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts & Sciences, Vice Dean for Faculty Development, and Professor of Sociology at the Washington University in St. Louis, has been elected the 116th President of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Allison J. Pugh, Professor of Sociology and Chair, Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality, University of Virginia, has been elected ASA Vice President. Wingfield and Pugh will serve as President- and Vice President-elect for one year before succeeding Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Jennifer A. Reich, University of Colorado-Denver, respectively, in August 2024.
Wingfield’s research examines how and why racial and gender inequality persists in professional occupations. She has lectured internationally on her research in this area, and her work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including the Annual Review of Sociology, Gender & Society, and American Sociological Review. In addition to her academic scholarship, Wingfield has written for mainstream outlets, including Slate, the Atlantic, Vox, and Harvard Business Review, and is the recipient of ASA’s 2018 Public Understanding of Sociology award. Her forthcoming book, Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It, will be published in October. Her previous book, Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy (University of California Press 2019), won the 2019 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
“It is a huge honor to be elected president of the American Sociological Association,” Wingfield said. “As the nation and the world grapple with a wide range of social problems, insights from the sociological community have never been more relevant. At the same time, academics, intellectuals, and even basic principles of sharing ideas and knowledge are all under direct assault. Thus, while I am so proud to be elected to lead the ASA, I am also very aware of the unique opportunities and obstacles we face at this time. I look forward to this challenge and am excited to lead the organization as we amplify the important contributions sociology has to offer.”
Wingfield, who is a former president of Sociologists for Women in Society and the Southern Sociological Society, has held several positions at ASA, including founding member of the Sociology Action Network Advisory Board, chair of the Race, Gender, and Class Section, and Council Member at Large.
Wingfield was Associate and Assistant Professor of Sociology, Georgia State University, and Assistant Professor of Sociology, Hollins University. She completed her PhD and MA degrees from Johns Hopkins University and BA degree from Spelman College.
Pugh’s research and teaching focus on collisions of economic life and intimacy. Her current book project, funded by the National Science Foundation, explores the rationalization—and automation—of service work that relies on relationships, and will be published in 2024 by Princeton University Press. Her book, The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity (Oxford 2015), is a study on the broader impacts of job precariousness, specifically how gender and class inequality shape the effects job insecurity on intimate life. Pugh’s first book, Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture (University of California Press 2009), documented how children and parents manage the commercialization of childhood.
Regarding her election as ASA Vice President, Pugh said, “I am honored to be elected vice president, humbled to be my colleagues’ choice, and I look forward to serving with Adia. I have not missed an Annual Meeting since attending my first year of graduate school, when Barrie Thorne joined me at a roundtable, and we were swamped with attendees hoping to hear from such an esteemed gender and childhood scholar. That was my first glimpse of what I’ve seen repeatedly at Annual Meetings since: the dynamic energy of intellectual exchange when scholars get together face to face. I’m looking forward to facilitating more of that in the future.”
Pugh has held several positions at ASA, including member, ASA Committee on Nominations, and member and chair of the Selection Committee for the Public Understanding of Sociology Award. She has served as chair of three Sections: the Section on Sociology of Culture, Section on Sociology of Sex & Gender, and Section on Children and Youth.
She has been a USC Berggruen Fellow, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University; and Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies, as well as Assistant and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. Pugh completed her PhD and MA degrees from the University of California-Berkeley, and an AB from Harvard University.
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About the American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a nonprofit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.
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