Josephine Beoku-Betts, President
Josephine Beoku-Betts is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Sociology at Florida Atlantic University. She earned her B.A. in Sociology and Social Anthropology at Hull University, U.K., M.A. in Sociology and West African Studies at Birmingham University, U.K., and Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on women’s political activism in post-war Sierra Leone and African women in academic scientific careers. She has published book chapters and peer-reviewed articles in several feminist and other scholarly journals. She is currently completing two co-edited books: War, Women and Post-Conflict Empowerment: Lessons from Sierra Leone (with Fredline M’Cormack Hale-Seton Hall University) and Producing Inclusive Feminist Knowledge: Positionalities and Discourses in the Global South (with Akosua Adomako Ampofo-University of Ghana). She is the current President of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) and former Co-President for Research Committee 32 (Women, Gender and Society) of the International Sociological Association. Josephine was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Sierra Leone in 2011 and 2018.
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Mignon R. Moore is Professor of Sociology at Barnard College and Columbia University, and chairs the sociology department at Barnard. She is President-Elect of the Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). Her areas of expertise are in the fields of sexuality, race, gender, family, aging and qualitative research methods. She has received grants to support her research from the National Institutes of Health, the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation, where she held a Visiting Scholar position. Her first book, Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships and Motherhood among Black Women (2011 University of California Press), is a study of same-sex parent families. It won the 2012 Distinguished Book Award from the ASA Sex & Gender section.
Professor Moore’s current work examines health and social support for sexual minority seniors to determine the ways community institutions can be of service to this population. She is using this research to write a book, tentatively titled In the Shadow of Sexuality: Social Histories of African American LGBT Elders, 1950-1979. Before joining Barnard in 2015, Moore was Associate Professor of Sociology at UCLA, where she co-directed the Resource Centers on Minority Aging Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine. She is past chair of the Race, Gender & Class Section of the American Sociological Association, is on the Executive Council of the Association of Black Sociologists, and was Deputy Editor of Gender & Society.
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Tiffany Taylor, Past President
Tiffany Taylor is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Kent State University at Kent (USA). She earned her B.A. in Political Science, M.S. in Sociology, and PhD in Sociology from North Carolina State University. Her teaching and research focus on topics related to work and inequality, including race, gender, and class. She has authored dozens of articles and book chapters, including research on policy implementation of programs for economically disadvantaged mothers in North Carolina and Ohio. More recently she has co-edited the inequality textbook (with Carissa M. Froyum and Katrina Bloch) Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities: Contemporary Readingsfrom Oxford University Press and co-edited a volume (with Katrina Bloch) for the book series Advances in Gender Research on marginalized mothers/mothering from the margins published by Emerald Group Publishing in fall 2018. She has served SWS on the Membership Committee, as Vice President, and is currently the President.
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Barret Katuna, Executive Officer
Barret Katuna became the full-time Executive Officer of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) in January 2017. Barret has been a member of SWS since 2008. Her initial SWS involvement began with the International Committee where she served as a lead United Nations delegate to the Economic and Social Council for SWS.
Prior to working for SWS, Barret was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut from August 2014 – December 2016. Barret completed her Ph.D. in April 2014 from the University of Connecticut. The title of her dissertation is: Breaking the Glass Ceiling?: Gender and Leadership in Higher Education. While pursuing her Ph.D., Barret also earned certificates from the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and Human Rights Institute. Barret has published her research in Societies Without Borders and Social Movement Studies. Barret is the author of Degendering Leadership in Higher Education (2019) published by Emerald Publishing. Barret is originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania and received a Bachelor’s Degree (French and Political Science) and Master’s Degree (Political Science) from Lehigh University before pursuing her graduate studies in Connecticut. Barret currently resides in South Glastonbury, Connecticut.
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Nancy López, Vice President
Dr. López is professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico (B.A. Columbia College, Columbia University; Ph.D. Graduate School & University Center, City University of New York). Dr. López directs and co-founded the Institute for the Study of “Race” and Social Justice (race.unm.edu) and she is the founding coordinator of the New Mexico Statewide Race, Gender, Class Data Policy Consortium. Dr. López served as the inaugural co-chair of the Diversity Council and she was awarded the Inaugural Academic Leadership Academy Fellowship of the Division of Equity and Inclusion, UNM. Dr. López is Secretary of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and Vice President of the Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). Dr. López’s scholarship, teaching and service is guided by the insights of intersectionality–the importance of examining the simultaneity of oppression and resistance as visible in the dynamics of tribal status/settler colonialism race/structural racism, gender/patriarchy, class/capitalism, ethnicity/nativism, sexuality/heterosexism as systems of inequality across a variety of social outcomes, including education, health, employment, housing, and developing contextualized solutions that advance social justice. Dr. López has served on over 70 PhD/MA committees and she given over 130 seminars on at national conferences, invited lectures and community gatherings.
Dr. López has been recognized for her contributions to engaged scholarship through the ASA William Foote Whyte Distinguished Career Award for Sociological Practice and Public Sociology. Dr. López has been active in debates about racial and ethnic measurements for the 2020 Census and she cautions that proposals to combine two analytically distinct concepts, Hispanic origin and race, into one question and linking nationalities to race undermine civil rights monitoring and enforcement and contribute to white supremacy, structural and colorblind racism, nativism and eugenics (See 2018 Tedex en español on the 2020 Census available at: race.unm.edu; See 2018 essay The Census Keeps Confusing Race and Ethnicity in conversation.com).
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Veronica Montes, Past Treasurer
Veronica Montes is an Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr College in the Department of Sociology. Her research falls in two areas: on immigration from Mexico and Central America to the United States and on the intersection between the process of homemaking, belonging and migration. Her publications have appeared in Gender & Society, Gender, Place and Culture, Apuntes, Contexts, and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. She is a recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral recently began her term as Treasure of the Sociologist for Women in Society Association.
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Roberta Villalón, Treasurer
Roberta is a Fulbright Scholar, Professor and Chairperson of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at St. John’s University, New York City. Born and raised in Argentina, Roberta has been committed to actively work for justice within and across geographical and social borders. Her background in political science and international relations, together with her expertise in Latin America and Latin American immigrants, has shaped her transnational sociological perspective distinctively. Her first authored book, Violence Against Latina Immigrants: Citizenship, Inequality and Community (2010, NYU Press), and the three-part special issue on The Resurgence of Collective Memory, Truth and Justice Mobilizations in Latin American Perspectives, with its related book, Memory, Truth and Justice in Contemporary Latin America (2017, Rowman & Littlefield), illustrate her global feminist politics. Journal articles like “Violence against Immigrants in a Context of Crisis: A Critical Migration Feminist of Color Analysis,” in the Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, and book chapters such as “Latina Battered Immigrants, Citizenship, and Inequalities: Reflections on Activist Research” in Taking Risks: Feminist Activist Research in the Americas edited by Julie Shayne (2013, SUNY), reflect how she has blended critical theory with transnational praxis. Currently, Roberta is writing Inequalities, Migration and Health: Critical Activist Research across Ecuadorean Borders, which will be published in 2020 by Bristol University Press, and editing a special issue on “Activist Research in 21st Century Americas” for Revista CS, published by the Department of Law and Social Sciences of ICESI University (Cali, Colombia). Currently, Roberta is Treasurer-Elect, and in the past she has served as SWS Chair of the Discrimination Committee and Co-Chair of the Committee of Academic Justice.
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Kristy Y. Shih, Treasurer-Elect
Dr. Kristy Y. Shih is Associate Professor of Human Development at California State University, Long Beach. She earned her B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from the University of Richmond, M.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Riverside. A critical race feminist sociologist, Dr. Shih specializes in Asian Americans, racial/ethnic minority families, immigrant and transnational families, family diversity, adult development and aging, intersectionality, feminist theories and methods, and qualitative interview methods.
Her current multi-site interview project examines the growing up experiences and ethnic identity development of adult former “parachute kids” from Taiwan who immigrated to the U.S./Canada alone for educational purposes during middle to high school years. This study also explores the return migration experiences of adult former “parachute kids” to their homeland, Taiwan. Dr. Shih also writes about the negative impacts of the model minority myth on Asian American individuals and families. Previous research engages a critical race feminist analysis of gender dynamics in Taiwanese, Taiwanese American, and Mexican American mother-in-law, son, and daughter-in-law relationships. Her publications have appeared in the Journal of Family Issues, Journal of Family Theory and Review, AFTA Springer Briefs in Family Therapy, Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, and Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology.
Dr. Shih is currently Treasurer-Elect for Sociologists for Women in Society. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Family Issues. She also serves on the Inclusion and Diversity Committee of National Council on Family Relations and on the Committee on Committees for Pacific Sociological Association.
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Andrea Boyles, Secretary
Dr. Andrea (Drea) S. Boyles, a native of St. Louis, MO, holds a B.A. in English and M.A. in Sociology from Lincoln University of Missouri. Later, she earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from Kansas State University with concentrations in Gender and Criminology. Her research areas/interests are race, gender, and class; police-citizen relations; neighborhood disadvantage and disorder; community resilience and collective action; and qualitative methods/ethnography.
Dr. Boyles is also author of books You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America and Race, Place, and Suburban Policing: Too Close for Comfort with the University of California Press.
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Kumiko Nemoto, Parliamentarian
Photo and Bio Coming Soon
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Jax Gonzalez, Student Representative
Jax J. Gonzalez received their Masters in Sociology and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality studies at Brandeis University in 2016. As a first-generation college student and queer activist interested in personal identity at the intersection of education, embodiment, and health; their research project came about as a concern with examining how adolescents are socialized in the classroom to understand their bodies. Their masters research continued their undergraduate work with Dr. Breanne Fahs explored the impact of educator subjectivities in elementary school health curricula and how educators manage “teaching the taboo.” Their current project centers the experiences of trans and gender expansive youth to better understand how school settings impact their ability to thrive.
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Tristen Kade, Student Representative-Elect
Tristen Kade received his master’s degree in sociology from the University of New Orleans in 2016. His scholarship derives from his personal experiences of being a trans man, first-generation student, and racial and ethnic minority identifying as Black and Mexican. His research interest is in gender and sexuality, with emphases in masculinity, trans studies, identities, intersectionality, and measurement. For his doctoral studies, Tristen will attend the University of California, Santa Barbara and plans for his research to incorporate an intersectional analysis at the axis of race, gender, and sexualities to understand how these identities intersect with each other among transmasculine individuals of color in their everyday social interactions as well as within social institutions.
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Rebecca Hanson, Awards Committee Chair
Rebecca Hanson is Assistant Professor of Crime, Law & Governance at the University of Florida, with a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law and the Center for Latin American Studies. Hanson has conducted research in the Venezuela, Colombia, and the US. Her research is centered on gender, policing, politics, violence, and qualitative methods. In 2019 she published Harassed: Gender, Bodies, and Ethnographic Research (University of California Press) with Patricia Richards. Her current book manuscript asks how revolutionary politics in Venezuela transformed policing and violence in the 21st century. Hanson has been a member of SWS since 2014.
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Shweta Adur, Discrimination Committee Chair
Shweta M. Adur is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Los Angeles. She completed her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Connecticut and has received a Master’s in International Development from the University of Pittsburgh. She also has a Masters in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, human rights and immigration. She is the co-author of the book “As the Leaves Turn Gold: Asian Americans and Experiences of Aging” that engages with issues surrounding aging and social inequality from a transnational perspective. She has authored several publications in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters and her most recent works have appeared in Current Sociology and Journal of Gender Studies.
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Natasha Santana, Assistant to the Executive Officer
Natasha Santana, previously SWS Intern, is now Assistant to Executive Officer. She recently graduated from the University of Connecticut with a BA in Communication. She has a love for design and a passion for social sciences, which makes SWS the perfect place to put her skills to use. After seeing how much SWS has grown in the past year, she cannot wait to see what will take place in the near future. Feel free to email her with any questions you may have or if you would like to get to know her.
Contact Natasha at: nsantana@socwomen.org