Bob Freeland has research interests in the areas of organizational theory, economic sociology, and social theory. His research to date has focused on the governance of large corporations and economic theories of the firm. He has published a book, The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation, that examines how General Motors’ organization changed in response to governance imperatives during the period from 1924–1960. His current work focuses on the legal definition of the employment relation and its interaction with corporate law; it attempts to show how legal institutions provide a foundation for legitimate authority that becomes embodied in organizational actors.
Chad Alan Goldberg is a professor of sociology affiliated with the Center for German and European Studies, the George L. Mosse/Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, and the George L. Mosse Program in History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He specializes in comparative-historical and political sociology as well as social theory. His first book, Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to Workfare (University of Chicago Press, 2007), won the Outstanding Book Award from the Theory Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems and received honorable mention for the Barrington Moore Book Award from the American Sociological Association in 2010. His second book, Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017), was selected as a finalist for the 2017 National Jewish Book Awards in the category of Modern Jewish Thought and Experience.
Wendy Y. Li is a Ph.D. student in sociology researching topics in globalization, international trade, economic empowerment, and contentious politics. Her current research investigates the nexus between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations and how interest groups, activists, the private sector, and other collective actors mobilize to influence the formation of international trade policy. Prior to entering academia, Li served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative as Special Assistant and Policy Advisor. She has also held positions at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs as well as Secretary John Kerry’s Policy Planning Staff.
Chaeyoon Lim an associate professor of sociology and current associate chair of the department. His research interests include political and civic participation, religion, public opinion, and social networks. He is currently working (or plan to work) on several projects, including: 1) how experiences in economic domain (especially labor market) spill over to civic and community life? 2) what are the mechanisms that underlie the persistence in civic disparity across local areas? 3) what are social and civic consequences of declining religiosity in the United States? 4) how do micro social interactions in daily life affect people’s sense of belonging and social solidarity?
Tiffany Neman is a Ph.D. student in Sociology and is affiliated with the Center for Demography and Ecology. Her work examines the residential context and its influence on individual perceptions of one’s circumstances; more broadly, she is interested in geographical contextual effects, subjective phenomena, social identity, and survey methodology. Neman is currently studying the relationship between individual financial well-being and local economic indicators.
Myra Marx Ferree is the Alice Cook Professor of Sociology. She studies feminist activism, gender discourse, and women’s movement organizing worldwide but especially focused on Germany and Europe. Her 2012 book Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective offers a model for thinking about institutional and discursive legacies in defining issues for the women’s movement and strategies chosen to address them. Her earlier books include Global Feminism: Women’s Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights and Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the US. She is currently working on a project on comparative gender equality politics in higher education and on editing a book on gender perspectives on human security.
Pamela Oliver is a Conway-Bascom Professor of Sociology. She developed “critical mass” theories of collective action and social movements that stressed the role of organizers, and has written other pieces on social movements theory. She has studied news coverage of protests and other public events. She also studies racial disparities in criminal justice and has written articles on the ethnic-racial dimensions of social movements and on linking theories of repression with theories of crime control. Along with former PCS member Alex Hanna and current PCS member Chaeyoon Lim, she was part of a project to develop MPEDS, and automated system for identifying protests in news sources. She is currently collecting data on Black protests using this system and is collaborating with Hanna and Lim on a methodological paper based on this work.
Erik Olin Wright is the Vilas Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin. His academic work has been centrally concerned with reconstructing the Marxist tradition of social theory and research in ways that attempt to make it more relevant to contemporary concerns and more cogent as a scientific framework of analysis. His empirical research has focused especially on the changing character of class relations in developed capitalist societies. Since 1992 he has directed the Real Utopias Project, which explores a range of proposals for new institutional designs that embody emancipatory ideals and yet are attentive to issues of pragmatic feasibility. His principle publications include Classes (Verso, 1985), The Debate on Classes (Verso, 1990), Reconstructing Marxism: Essays on Explanation and the Theory of History (with Elliott Sober and Andrew Levine; Verso, 1992); Interrogating Inequality (Verso, 1994); Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 1997); Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (with Archon Fung; Verso, 2003); Envisioning Real Utopias (Verso, 2010); and, jointly with Joel Rogers, American Society: How It Really Works (W. W. Norton, 2010).