Tiffany Taylor, 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 the forthcoming text Degendering Leadership in Higher Education (September 2019) to be 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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Adia Harvey Wingfield, Past-President
Adia Harvey Wingfield is Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research examines how racial and gender inequality persist in professional occupations. Dr. Wingfield has lectured internationally on her research in this area, and her work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals including Social Problems, Gender & Society, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. She is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic and has written for Fortune and Inside Higher Ed. Professor Wingfield is the author of several books, most recently No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men’s Work, and has won multiple awards from sections of the American Sociological Association.
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Josephine Beoku-Betts, President-Elect
Josephine Beoku-Betts is currently President-Elect of SWS. Josephine Beoku-Betts is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Sociology at Florida Atlantic University. Her research focuses on women’s political activism in post-war Sierra Leone and African women in academic scientific careers. She co-edited Women and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Power, Opportunities, and Constraints (1998) and has published book chapters and articles in various feminist and other scholarly journals. She is President-Elect for Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) and former Co-President for Research Committee 32 (Women, Gender and Society) of the International Sociological Association. Dr. Beoku-Betts is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Sierra Leone (2018-2019).
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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 (Ronni) Tichenor, Past Treasurer
I am an Associate Professor of Sociology, employed by the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute. I joined SWS in 1996 and have served on several committees, including Discrimination, Academic Justice, and Sister-to-Sister, co-Chairing the last from 2010-2012. I served on the Program Committee for the SWS Winter Meeting in Tamaya, New Mexico in 2013, and served two years on the Editorial Board for Gender & Society.
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Veronica Montes, 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-Elect
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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Christin Munsch, Secretary
Dr. Christin L. Munsch is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut and an expert on gender, work, and family. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell University, and held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. Her research has been published in leading academic journals such as American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and the Journal of Marriage and Family, as well as covered in mainstream media outlets including The New York Times, CNN and The Huffington Post
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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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Melanie Heath, Parliamentarian
Melanie Heath is Associate Professor of Sociology and Graduate Chair at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. She earned her B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, her M.A. in Sociology from California State University, Sacramento, and her PhD in Sociology from the University of Southern California. Her areas of research include gender, sexuality, the family, religion, and the state. She is the author of One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America (NYU Press, 2012). She is co-author with Janice Aurini and Stephanie Howells of The How To of Qualitative Research (Sage, 2016). She has published in Gender & Society, Signs, The Sociological Quarterly, Sociological Perspectives, Qualitative Sociology, and Contexts. She is currently completing a comparative project on government regulation of polygamy that has been funded through The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Standard Research Grant and Insight Grant). In 2017, she became President Elect for RC32: Women in Society of the International Sociological Association and has served as chair for the Feminist Activist Award (2013-2016) and on the Nominations Committee (2015-2017) for the Sociologists for Women in Society.
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Marybeth C. Stalp, Awards Committee Chair
Marybeth C. Stalp is Professor of Sociology, and Department Head of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research centers on the intersection of gender, leisure, and culture, and includes US, UK, and Irish women quilters, North American handcrafters, the Red Hat Society, and women and men craftartists in the US. Stalp studies how aging women have fun throughout the life course, craftivism, and the importance of failure in crafting and the creative process, all with a focus on the maker, like in her 2007 book, Quilting: The Fabric of Everyday Life. Stalp has been a member of SWS since 1999, has previously served as Chair of the Social Action Committee, and currently serves as Chair of the Awards Committee.
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Katie L. Acosta, Discrimination & Academic Justice Co-Chair
Katie Acosta is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Georgia State University. Her research and scholarly interests center the intersections of gender, sexuality, Latinx Studies, race/ethnicity, family, and immigration. She is the author of Amigas y Amantes: Sexually Nonconforming Latinas Negotiate Family, which explores the ways in which sexually nonconforming Latinas manage relationships with their partners, families of origin, and families of choice. Her work appears in the Journal of Family Theory & Review, Family Relations, Sexualities, Journal of Homosexuality, Gender & Society and various edited volumes. She is working on her second book, Stepping into Queer Parenting, which centers the social, and legal experiences of LBQ stepparent families. In addition to her service for SWS, she is a council member for the American Sociological Associations’ Sex and Gender section and Vice President elect for the Southern Sociological Society.
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Shweta Adur, Discrimination & Academic Justice Co-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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Andrea Boyles, Sister to Sister Committee Co-Chair
Dr. Andrea (Drea) S. Boyles, a native of St. Louis, MO, earned a B.A. in English and M.A. in Sociology from Lincoln University of Missouri. Later, she received her PhD in Sociology from Kansas State University with concentrations in Gender and Criminology. Her research interests are social inequality; gender; the intersection of race, class, and gender; criminology; incarceration; race, place, and policing, ethnography; neighborhood disorder and crime prevention. She has taught a broad series of courses in Anthropology, Sociology, and Criminal Justice ranging from Culture and Communication, Social Problems, Sociocultural Theory, and the Sociology of Poverty and Conflict to Policing, Victimology, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender and Public Policy in Criminal Justice.
Dr. Boyles has also taught within the Missouri prison system and presented research on the effects of incarcerated parents on children. As author of Race, Place, and Suburban Policing: Too Close for Comfort, Dr. Boyles’s current research hinges on community disorder and black social ties with another manuscript under contract with the University of California Press.
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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