Current Officers and Chairs

Mary J. Osirim, Co-President

Mary Johnson Osirim is Interim Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Franklin and Marshall College and Co-President (with Melanie Heath) of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). She is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Bryn Mawr College and previously held positions there as Provost and Special Advisor to the Provost, Dean of Graduate Studies, Chair of the Sociology Department, Director of Africana Studies and Faculty Diversity Liaison. Over the past 37 years, she has also held many other positions at Bryn Mawr including Co-Director of the Center for International Studies and the Center for Ethnicities, Communities and Social Policy.

Her research has focused on women, entrepreneurship, the state and non-governmental organizations in the microenterprise sectors of Nigeria and Zimbabwe, the development of gender studies scholarship in Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa as well as transnationalism and community development among African immigrants in the United States.  She is the author of Enterprising Women in Urban Zimbabwe:  Gender, Microbusiness and Globalization (2009), co-editor (with Ayumi Takenaka) of Global Philadelphia:  Immigrant Communities, Old and New (2010) as well as over 40 articles and book chapters.  She is currently engaged in two research projects – the first investigates how African community organizations in Greater Philadelphia demonstrate a new Pan-Africanism; and the second explores how a Black community in southeast Queens, NY socialized a group of African American women in the 1960’s who became leaders in various professions and communities throughout the US. Mary is the recipient of several grants and fellowships including an NSF Research Initiation Grant, a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs, a Woodrow Wilson International Center Fellowship, and a Carter G. Woodson Fellowship at the University of Virginia.  In 2017, she received the Distinguished Feminist Lecturer Award from SWS.

Melanie Heath, Co-President

Melanie Heath is Associate Professor of Sociology at McMaster University, Canada, and Co-President Elect (with Mary Johnson Osirim) of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). Her areas of expertise are in the fields of sexuality, gender, family, politics, and qualitative methods.

She has studied masculinities in religious conservative movements and marriage promotion in the United States, examining conservative politics that sought on the one hand to promote heterosexual marriage as a solution to poverty, and on the other hand to ban same-gender marriage as a threat to American civilization. She is author of One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America (2012 New York University Press). Her forthcoming book, Forbidden Intimacies: Polygamies at the Limits of Tolerance (Stanford University Press, Series on Globalization in Everyday Life), investigates the transnational regulation of plural marriage in North America, France, and Mayotte. She is co-author of The How To of Qualitative Research (with Janice Aurini and Steph Howells; 2022 Sage, 2nd edition), and co-editor of Global Feminist Autoethnographies During COVID-19: Displacements and Disruptions (with Akosua Darkwah, Josephine Beoku-Betts, and Bandana Purkayastha; 2022 Routledge). She has received several grants to support her research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Melanie is President of the Research Council for Women, Gender, and Society (RC32) of the International Sociological Association.

S. Crawley, President-Elect

Roberta Villalón, Past President

Originally from Mar del Plata, Roberta Villalón was born during the last military regime in Argentina. With a genuine interest in the politics of social inequalities, 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 feminist 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 “Neoliberalism, Corruption and Legacies of Contention: Argentina’s Social Movements, 1993-2006,” in Latin American Perspectives (2007, 34:2) also reflect how she has blended critical theory with transnational praxis. Roberta’s commitment to put sociology in action is evident as well in her recent edition of “Academic Activism in the Americas of the XXI Century” in Revista CS (2019).

A Fulbright Scholar and Professor of Sociology at St. John’s University, New York City, Roberta is also affiliated with the Committee in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), the Women’s, Gender and Sexualities Program, and the Global Development and Social Justice program at the university. Over the years, she has been an active member and has served in various capacities in the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the International Sociological Association (ISA); and Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS).

Currently, Roberta is finalizing a transnational, interdisciplinary, and applied research project on Health Inequalities and Migration focusing on the Ecuadorean case. She will be publishing Inequalities, Migration and Health: Critical Activist Research across Ecuadorean Borders (2022, Bristol University Press), authored “Una aproximación sociológica crítica activista al estudio de salud y migración: El caso ecuatoriano” (A Critical Sociological Activist Approach to the study of Health and Migration: The Ecuadorean Case) in Revista CS (2019), and and co-authored with Sarah Kraft, “Migratory Stress, Health and Gender: An Intersectional Analysis of the Ecuadorean Case,” (Forthcoming in Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Vol. 39, edited by Jacobs Kronenfeld, J., Emerald Press). Moreover, Roberta in collaboration with Nancy López, Verónica Montes, and Erika Busse-Cárdenas, is working on the formation of the Latinx Feminist Sociology Collective. Last, she is elaborating an edited volume proposal devoted to a transnational exploration of the relevance and needed transformations of feminist sociologies in the era of global pandemics.

Veronica Montes, Vice President, Chair of Committee on Committees

Rodica Lisnic, Treasurer

Rodica is a Sociologist with over 6 years of research and teaching experience. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Rodica is also a Visiting Scholar with the National Science Foundation, ARC Network. Originally from Moldova, Rodica has found another home in Arkansas. Rodica received her bachelor’s in Law Studies from Romania, a master’s degree in Sociology and an interdisciplinary PhD degree in Public Policy from the University of Arkansas. Her research focus is on investigating gender and race inequality, institutional policies and their implementation, and practices in the context of higher education institutions, especially STEM fields. Rodica’s most recent work is a project with the NSF ARC Network, focusing on persistence strategies women of color faculty in STEM fields use to navigate academia. Rodica’s work appears in journals like Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Sociological Spectrum, and Humanity and Society.

As a member of the SWS CEDAW subcommittee, Rodica is interested in the women’s rights aspect of CEDAW. Her education background in Law and Public Policy sparks her interest in CEDAW and how it can be used to address human rights issues like sex trafficking in Moldova. Her Emerald Literati Award winning research on sex trafficking is published in volume 26 of Advances in Gender Research. 

Tracy Ore, Treasurer-Elect

hara bastas, Secretary

Chloe Bird, Parliamentarian

Alexis Grant-Panting, Student Representative

Alexis Grant-Panting is a current PhD student in the department of Sociology at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX. She defines herself as scholar-activist with a passion for helping young people who come from marginal backgrounds. Her work draws on her experiences as a black woman, first generation student, and a mother. Her research interest focuses on rural communities, education, teaching and pedagogy, and public sociology with a particular focus on the experiences of people of color, mothers in the academy, and inequality. Alexis’s most current examines the role of Public Intellectuals/Sociologist as they organize for racial equity within the Black Lives Matter Movement in rural communities. She is also a mother of 2 who may join her regularly in meetings and presentations. Alexis also serves on the Graduate Student Council for the Association of Black Sociologist.

Pedrom Nasiri, Student Representative-Elect

Pedrom Nasiri MStJ (they/them) is a Joseph-Armand Bombardier scholar and doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary. Pedrom is a committed scholar-activist who has worked with governmental and non-governmental agencies in Canada on issues related to QTBIPOC health inequities and anti-racist initiatives for newcomer BIPOC youth.

Pedrom’s research interests reside at the intersections of family, migration, intersectionality, queer sociology, and critical phenomenology. Pedrom’s current doctoral work examines the increasing prevalence of multiple-partner families in Canada and the USA and their articulations with ongoing projects of intersectional subject formation. They are also the Research Project Coordinator for a community-based research initiative funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which explores how newcomer BIPOC youth’s experiences, understanding, and perception of race, racism and anti-racism transform during the re/settlement process in Canada and how such transformations may inform re/settlement programming toward anti-racist practices.

Maria Cecilia Hwang, Awards Committee Chair

Maria Cecilia Hwang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines how borders are experienced and embodied in the everyday lives of migrants. Her research interests include international migration, globalization and transnationalism, gender, sexualities, and Asia and Asian America. She has published in Gender & Society, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, WSQ, International Migration Review, and Global Networks.

Evonnia Woods, Social Action Committee Co-Chair

Evonnia has spent the last six years employing principles of intersectionality as a reproductive justice organizer and movement builder with Reproaction, where she has worked on increasing birth control and abortion access, addressing racial health disparities, and ending HIV criminalization. Her advocacy has prioritized relationship building with health experts and social justice leaders, which has enabled her to launch and lead their maternal and infant mortality campaign, co-found and co-organize the Mid-MO Reproductive Justice Coalition, and join a feminist community radio show as a host discussing reproductive justice issues.

Heather Hlavka, Social Action Committee Co-Chair

Heather R. Hlavka (she/her/they) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences at Marquette University. A feminist sociologist and interdisciplinary scholar, her research on gender violence and intersectionality began as a first-gen college student and activist at the University of Minnesota. Her work on interpersonal and state trauma, young people’s experiences of sexual violence, science and technology, and feminist embodied research methods and ethics have been published in journals such as Gender & Society, Violence Against Women, Men & Masculinities, Law and Social Inquiry, Law & Society Review, The Gender Policy Report, and popular media and on public radio. She has two decades of sexual violence advocacy including crisis-line response, group facilitation and education, campus services, and policy/practice review. Her most recent books include Bodies in Evidence: Race, Gender, and Science in Sexual Assault Adjudication (NYU Press, 2021, with Sameena Mulla) and Researching Gender-Based Violence: Embodied and Intersectional Approaches (NYU Press, 2022, with April Petillo). Her current collaborative, community and survivor-led participatory action research focuses on embodied gender trauma, exercise/movement, and empowerment. She has been a member of SWS since graduate school and is excited to expand her role and support the work of the organization.

Marisela Martinez-Cola, Co-Chair for Committee on Discrimination 

Marisela Martinez-Cola is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Utah State University.  She is an intersectional scholar with a research focus on comparative critical race studies.  Her teaching focus is on race & ethnicity, social movements, and qualitative methods. She has been published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Latino Studies, Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, Law & Society, and Teaching Sociology.  Her forthcoming book, The Bricks Before Brown v. Board of Education, will be published in The University of Georgia’s Race and Ethnicity Series. It is an intersectional, comparative, and interdisciplinary study of Mexican American, Native American, and Chinese American school desegregation cases that came before the famed 1954 case that dismantled the “separate but equal” doctrine. She earned her bachelors at The University of Michigan (African American Studies), her law degree at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and her doctorate at Emory University.  She has been a member of SWS since 2016 and served as co-chair for Travel Arrangements for the 2017 Winter Meeting in Atlanta, GA.

LaTonya J. Trotter, Committee on Academic Justice Co-Chair

LaTonya J. Trotter is an Associate Professor of Bioethics and Humanities within the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. As a sociologist, she takes an institutional view of ethics by considering how social and workplace institutions shape notions of responsibility and what constitutes “good” or ethical decisions by both health care professionals and lay providers of care. In considering how decisions around care get made, her work connects changes in the organization of medical work to the reproduction of racial, economic, and gender inequality. She takes up these and other questions in her award-winning first book, More Than Medicine: Nurse Practitioners and the Problems They Solve for Patients, Health Care Organizations, and the State (Cornell University Press 2020).

Dr. Trotter’s publications have received awards sponsored by the American Public Health Association, the British Medical Association, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the American Sociological Association. She is on the editorial board of the journals Gender & Society and Contemporary Sociology, and is also on the Steering Committee of the Carework Network, an international organization of researchers, policymakers, and advocates striving to change the conversation around how we see, fund, and do care work.

Andrea N. Hunt, Committee on Academic Justice Co-Chair

Dr. Andrea Hunt is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Mitchell-West Center for Social Inclusion and the Center for Women’s Studies at the University of North Alabama. Her teaching, research, and community work cover a range of interrelated topics including youth and families, gender, mental health, trauma, identity development, mentoring, and inclusive practices. She is a co-partner in Hunt-Cain Consulting, LLC which specializes in career, leadership, and communication strategies for students and professionals in the education, civic, and corporate fields. She has served as the Co-PI for several campus climate surveys and assisted with the development and implementation of a strategic diversity plan. Dr. Hunt has facilitated numerous workshops on trauma-informed practices and ways to create more inclusive environments in education, nonprofits, and organizations. Dr. Hunt serves on the board of OnePlace of the Shoals, Riverbend Center for Mental Health, and SPAN of Lauderdale County. She currently serves as the Chair for the Committee on Women, Gender, and Sexuality for the Mid-South Sociological Association; serves on the Southern Sociological Society’s Committee for Sociological Practice; and is co-chair for the Committee on Academic Justice for Sociologists for Women in Society. 

LaToya Council, Sister to Sister Committee Co-Chair

LaToya Council is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Lehigh University. Her research interests are race, gender, and class; work and family; health and wellness. LaToya’s current book project focuses on heterosexual Black middle-class couples with children. In the book, LaToya explores couples’ time use related to work, family, and personal wellbeing. Other research projects LaToya is involved with focuses on Black middle and upper-middle-class women’s incorporation of placemaking as a form of self-care. 

Pallavi Banerjee, Sister to Sister Committee Co-Chair

Pallavi Banerjee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary since 2015.  Before this she was a postdoctoral fellow at the sociology department at Vanderbilt University.  She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Illinois, Chicago in December of 2012. Her research interests are situated at the intersections of sociology of immigration, gender, unpaid and paid labour, intersectionality, transnationalism, minority families and the Global South. Her forthcoming book entitled, Dismantling Dependence:  Gendered Migrations, Indian High-Skilled Immigrant Families and the Visa Regime forthcoming, NYU Press. explores how the immigration and visa regimes of United States affect men-led and women led immigrant families of Indian professional workers in the U.S.  Pallavi is currently working on a new book manuscript and several research papers from her new Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded project on refugee resettlement of Yazidis, Rohingyas and Syrians in the U.S. and Canada. She has been a member of SWS since 2007.

Chaitanya Lakkimsetti, Publications Committee Co-Chair

Manisha Desai, Publications Committee Co-Chair

Sharla Alegria, Career Development Committee Co-Chair and Committee on Committees Co-Chair

Mindy Fried, Career Development Committee Co-Chair

Mindy Fried, M.S.W., Ph.D. is a sociologist with 30 years of experience conducting research, teaching, and conducting policy analysis on organizational and workplace issues. As Principal of Arbor Consulting Partners, Mindy works collaboratively with organizations to help them build their capacity and strengthen their programs and policies. Her areas of expertise include work and family policies, education, the arts, grassroots initiatives and leadership development. Mindy has also taught courses on gender, work and public policy at MIT, Brandeis, Tufts and Boston University.  And she has taught Evaluation Research at Boston College. Her books include Caring for Red: A Daughter’s Memoir (Vanderbilt University Press, July, 2016), and Taking Time: Parental Leave Policy and Corporate Culture (Temple University Press). Mindy is also the Director of Hoopla Productions, a nonprofit organization that produces arts events aimed at building community across the divides of race, class, culture and immigrant status.  She founded and hosts The Shape of Care, a podcast about care workers, care recipients and the systems that make caregiving in the U.S. so challenging.  Mindy received her Masters and Doctorate degrees in Sociology from Brandeis University, and a Masters in Social Work from Syracuse University, with a focus on Community Organizing and Social Policy Planning.

Erin Baker, Media Relations Committee Chair

Erin Baker is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Minot State University. She earned her PhD in Sociology from Wayne State University. Her research focuses on the areas of motherhood, mental health, and family. She is currently studying homeschooling and its impact on families. Specifically, she is interested in the many ways that the added labor of homeschooling impacts the mental health and well-being of homeschooling mothers.  One of the things that Erin appreciates about SWS is the ability to connect with other feminist scholars, so please reach out to her at Erin.bakergiese@minotstateu.edu if you want to know more about her involvement in SWS, the Media Relations Committee, her research, or you just want to chat with another feminist scholar.

Fumilayo Showers, International Committee Chair

Fumilayo Showers is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut, where she is also a faculty affiliate of the Institute of Collaboration on Health Intervention and Policy (InCHIP) and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS).  Her research interests center on gender and international migration, immigrant integration, immigrant labor and entrepreneurship, African immigrants in the US, and the social organization of health and long-term care in the US. Her book, Migrants Who Care: West Africans at the Frontlines of US Health Care, (under contract with Rutgers University press), chronicles the lived experiences of West African immigrants as health care workers and labor market brokers/entrepreneurs in health care provision in the U.S.

She completed her PhD and master’s degrees in Sociology at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA.