Sociology

Dr. Jonathan Coley (Jonathan Atcuson-Coley) is Associate Professor of Sociology and Graduate Program Director for the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. He is also Editor-in-Chief of The Sociological Quarterly.

Dr. Coley's research interests include social movements, politics, religion, education, work, gender and sexuality, and race and ethnicity. His current research focuses on student activism and organizations at U.S. colleges and universities, LGBTQ activism and policies within religious institutions, occupational activism among professional workers, and local-level religion-state relations in the United States. His past work examined biography and history in the Nashville civil rights movement, culture and the early U.S. labor movement, and environmental policymaking in the United States.

His work regularly appears in leading peer-reviewed journals such as American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Mobilization, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Education, and Work and Occupations. He is also author of Gay on God's Campus: Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities and co-editor of LGBTQ Religious Activism: Rethinking Identity, Faith, and Social Change. 

Dr. Coley's research has been recognized through awards from the American Sociological Association, Society for the Study of Social Problems, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and more. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, and Association for the Sociology of Religion, among other organizations.

To view his CV and for other information, visit his personal website: http://jonathancoley.com

Research Interests:

Social movements; political sociology; sociology of religion; sociology of education; sociology of work, occupations, and organizations; sociology of gender and sexuality; sociology of race and ethnicity

Dr. Katie Constantin joined the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University in Fall 2021. She received her PhD from Texas A&M University in 2021. Her research primarily examines the intersections between social psychology and criminology. At present, for example, her work is focused on understanding how status relationships between group members affect the ways in which individuals respond to deviant or criminal behavior and how apologies for past discretions affect cooperation among small groups.  

Research Interests:

Social psychology, small groups, decision-making, experimental methods, crime/deviance, violence, & punishment

Alex Diamond is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. As ethnographer, educator, photographer, and documentary filmmaker, he focuses on understanding how political, economic, and environmental transformation connect through people's lives. Whether studying politicians and coca farmers in Colombia or marijuana farmers and dispensary owners in Oklahoma, he uses a deep engagement with people's lives to provide a fresh perspective on longstanding debates related to peace, politics, and social deviance: What kinds of drug economies emerge from different configurations of economic and political relations? How are power, crime, violence, and corrupt practices (re)produced in community life? How can we establish peace, social justice, and state authority? He has published articles in leading peer-reviewed journals like Social Problems, Qualitative Sociology, Sociological Forum, and Revista Maguaré and his book, Governing the Excluded, is under contract with University of Chicago Press. He has also written a dozen public articles on Colombian politics in Spanish and English for outlets like El Espectador, the North American Congress on Latin America, Jacobin, and Colombia Reports. He is the co-founder and co-editor (with Sneha Annavarapu) of the website and podcast Ethnographic Marginalia, which provides a space for reflection on and discussion of ethnographic methods and experiences. Along with written articles, he draws heavily on photography, and is co-director of the documentary film titled "An Uncomfortable Peace."

For more information, visit his personal website at https://alexkdiamond.com/.

Research Interests:

Political Sociology; Peace, War, and Social Conflict; Criminology; Drugs and Society; Development; Ethnography.

Andrew Fullerton is Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University (OSU). He joined the OSU Sociology department in 2007 after completing his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Connecticut (2007). He also has a MA in Survey Research from the University of Connecticut (2003) and a MA in Sociology from Indiana University (2001). He is currently writing a book on applied ordered regression models (under contract with Cambridge University Press) and co-editing a book on insecurity (under contract with Edward Elgar). His research has been published in journals such as Social Forces, Social Problems, Sociological Methods and Research, and Social Science Research. He has also published a book on ordered regression models with Chapman and Hall/CRC and a book on neoliberalism and insecurity with Routledge. Andrew teaches courses in Quantitative Methods, Social Stratification, and Social Problems. He currently serves as the co-editor of Social Problems.

Research Interests:

Quantitative Methods
Work and Labor
Social Stratification

Political Sociology

Michael Long is Professor of Sociology at OSU. He is the author/co-author of ten books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters primarily in the areas of environmental sociology, green criminology, sustainability, food insecurity, agriculture, hazards/disasters, extreme weather, resilience, energy, and quantitative methodology. Michael has received funding from the US National Science Foundation, US Department of Agriculture, the British Academy, among others, to support his research. He is co-editor of Social Problems, a former co-editor of The Sociological Quarterly, and is the lead editor of the Handbook on Inequality and the Environment.

Jericho R. McElroy is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Criminology and Criminal Justice, in the Department of Sociology, at Oklahoma State University. Jericho received his Ph.D. in sociology from Oklahoma State University, specializing in criminology and deviance as well as social inequality. 

His research interests traverse three domains, primarily using quantitative methods:

• (a) green criminology and sociology of punishment (for example, examining prison proliferation and carceral environmental justice);
• (b) sociology of firearms (for example, investigating the social, economic, and political determinants of restrictive firearm law enactment); and
• (c) college student activism (for example, explaining the presence, form, and outcomes of campus activism).

Jericho's research has been published in several peer-reviewed outlets, including regional sociology journals as well as national and international criminology journals. In addition, Jericho remains an active member of many professional organizations, such as the American Sociological Association (ASA), the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), the American Society of Criminology (ASC), the Midwest Sociological Society (MSS), the Oklahoma Sociological Association (OSA), and Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD). Jericho currently serves as an editorial board member of Social Problems and of The Sociological Quarterly as well. He is also a former managing editor of The Sociological Quarterly.

Heather McLaughlin joined the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University in 2013. Her research explores gender inequality across the life course, particularly in work, law and sport. Her main line of research explores the precursors and consequences of workplace sexual harassment. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as American Sociological Review, Gender & Society, Criminology, Harvard Business Review and Law & Society Review. She is also a strong proponent of public sociology and has shared her expertise with numerous print, television, radio and online media, including The New York Times, Slate, The New Yorker, Huffington Post, FiveThirtyEight, KOCO Morning News and NPR's Marketplace.

Research Interests:

sociology of gender; stratification and inequality; life course; work and occupations; law, crime, and deviance; sport

Tamara (Tammy) Mix is a Professor and the Laurence L. and Georgia Ina Dresser Professor in Rural Sociology in the Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Oklahoma State University. Mix earned a B.A. in Sociology from James Madison University, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She has research interests in environmental sociology, environmental inequality, race, class and gender inequality, and social movements. A qualitative researcher, Mix has conducted projects involving a diverse range of stakeholders to address topics including environmentally-related community contamination, water access and quality, food justice and security, and energy and resource inequalities. She has experience with participatory research strategies, building projects with applied components and solutions-based approaches and integrating the perspectives and voices of impacted and underserved populations.

Research Interests:

Environmental Sociology; Environmental Inequality; Race, Class & Gender Inequality; Social Movements; Social Justice; Qualitative Research Methods

I joined the Department of Sociology and the Center for Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University in Fall 2024. I received my BA in Swahili language and Literature from Moi University in Kenya, and an MA and a Ph.D. in African Cultural Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My research uses Autoethnography and personal narratives to understand how through language, discourses of gender and sexuality are produced, negotiated, and expressed in post-colonial African settings. I am primarily concerned with how local and global discourses shape and influence contemporary black masculinity. Employing both decolonial and transnational feminist methodologies, my research activities and pedagogical approaches recognize the self as a crucial site of social justice activism as well as an important epistemological locus.

Research Interests:

Autoethnography, Decoloniality, Race, Class, & Gender Inequality, Language & Society, Third-World Feminism(s), Foreign Language Pedagogy

Dr. Eden Nay is a Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) in the Sociology Department of Oklahoma State University (OSU) where they completed their PhD in Sociology in 2026. Broadly, their research and teaching interests are queer, trans, and disability studies; deviance and stigma; and quantitative methods. Since their leading role in Tulsa's 2019 Prism Project Report, their work has been community-engaged research in Oklahoma, specifically with LGBTQ+ people. Their dissertation, "Stigma and Mental Health among LGBTQ+ Oklahomans," aimed to relaunch and update the 2019 Prism Project with a special examination of the effects of multiple levels of stigma on flourishing and distress. While their position as VAP is teaching focused, they are currently writing to publish their novel LGBTQ+ Perceived Structural Stigma scale, which they developed as part of their dissertation research.

Dr. Stephen M. Perkins joined OSU’s Department of Sociology in 2002. His current research centers on North American archaeology and ethnohistorical investigations of Indigenous societies. His teaching focuses on undergraduate education. Additionally, Perkins remains committed to the public dissemination of his research for the benefit of nonspecialist audiences.

Perkins earned a PhD in the Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University. For his doctoral degree he conducted a year of research in Mexico funded by a Fulbright fellowship and a Wenner-Gren Foundation grant. Utilizing Spanish colonial documents in national, state, and municipal archives, he investigated the triangulated conflict between Spaniards, Indigenous Nahua nobles and Nahua commoners over control of land, water, and municipal politics between the 16th to 18th centuries. His undergraduate courses at OSU reflect his training in Mesoamerican ethnohistory and ethnography, most especially ANTH 3443: Peoples of Mesoamerica and ANTH 4223: The Aztec Empire.

Since arriving at OSU, he has collaborated with colleagues from OU and the Oklahoma Archeological Survey to investigate colonial-era fortified Wichita trading village sites across Oklahoma. This research has involved numerous undergraduate field schools (ANTH 3990: Fieldwork in Anthropology) where students learn archaeological excavation methods in the recovery of material evidence of Wichita life from the 15th to 18th centuries. In addition to peer-reviewed journal articles, he is a co-author of The Deer Creek Site: An eighteenth-century fortified Wichita village on the American Southern Great Plains (2024; London: BAR Publishing). At present he is working with colleagues on a monograph concerning a 15th-century fortified trade camp in western Oklahoma where the Wichita seasonally processed bison hides for use and trade with affiliated groups further west, including Apache groups occupying the Texas panhandle.

In addition to his research, teaching, and public outreach, Perkins has actively served on committees in the Sociology Department, including as past chair of the undergraduate and graduate committees. Currently, he serves as an appointed member of the Oklahoma Archeological Survey's Citizens's Advisory Board; as the elected chair of OSU’s Faculty Council (2025-2026); and as an elected member of the Plains Anthropological Society Board of Directors (2025-2027).

Research:

Anthropology; ethnohistory & historical anthropology; archaeology; political economy & anarchy theories; borderlands; Great Plains; Mesoamerica

Ashley Railey joined the OSU Department of Sociology in Fall 2022. Her current research focuses on the social and economic dimensions of healthcare seeking and utilization, primarily in community health and rural settings. A secondary line of research evaluates the relationship between animal disease, biosecurity, and human health. Funding of her research includes by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, US Health Resources & Services Administration, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Aging, and US Department of Agriculture. Before OSU, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the intersection of public health and sociology at Indiana University and was a health economics researcher at the Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health at Washington State University.

Research Interests:

Social network analyses, impact evaluation, health disparities

Rachel M. Schmitz, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. Her research and teaching interests include qualitative methods, families, health inequalities, resilience, and human-animal bonds. Her current work emphasizes the voices and lived experiences of multiple marginalized people in rural regions and their understandings of health as well as how people conceptualize the role of companion animals in their lives.

Research Interests:

Stratification, Resilience, Families, Health Disparities, Qualitative Methods, Human-Animal Bonds

Dr. Corinne Schwarz is an Associate Professor of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at Oklahoma State University. She received her Ph.D. with honors in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Kansas in May 2018. Her research and teaching interests include gender–based violence, frontline work, reproductive justice, and anti–carceral feminisms.

Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation. She has also been published in an interdisciplinary range of journals, including Health and Human Rights Journal, Feminist Formations, and Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work. Outside of work, Dr. Schwarz enjoys baking, weightlifting, and spending time with her cats, Jasper, Dot, and Duck.

Research Interests:

Gender and sexuality; human trafficking; punishment and social control; frontline work/street-level bureaucracy theory; reproductive justice; feminist methods

My expertise is in health disparities among American Indian/First Nations peoples, particularly in substance use and mental health, and my research has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Each project uses community-based participatory principles and addresses important research questions about mental, physical, and behavioral health disparities. One stream has focused on health and substance use among AI/FN young people. The original project, which I started working on as a doctoral student at the University of Nebraska, was a longitudinal panel study of adolescents (who were ages 10 to 12 years at baseline) from 8 reservation/reserves in the upper Midwest and Canada. The study is now in its 12th wave and includes the original participants and their children, providing three generations of insight into the emergence of health disparities as well as cultural sources of strength and resilience. 

The second stream of research concerns Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) among Ojibwe adults. AI peoples have the highest rate of T2D among all Americans, and our studies have identified the impacts of stress on comorbidities and treatment compliance, both of which can affect disease progression. We have also examined culturally-salient coping resources that can buffer or offset stress. Currently, we are conducting a randomized controlled trial of an AI-developed intervention, Together Overcoming Diabetes, with five Ojibwe reservation communities. This intervention aims to improve health outcomes of AI adults with T2D and their at-risk children through a home-based education program that incorporates diet, exercise, stress, social support, and culture.

My roles in each of those projects have been focused on survey design and measurement selection, data analysis, writing research papers and reports, mentoring graduate students and post-doctoral scholars, and collaborating with community research councils on publication and dissemination.

I began my career as a tenure track faculty member in Sociology at OSU in 1996.  I am currently Regents Service Professor, Sociology, Oklahoma State University

Below is a summary of my academic and administrative appointments:

1996-2001 Assistant Professor; 2001-2009 Associate Professor;  2009-2024 Professor, Sociology,

2002-2004 Coordinator, Graduate Studies, Sociology, Oklahoma State University

2005-2008 Director, Women's Studies Program, Oklahoma State University

2010-2012 Interim Associate Dean, Graduate College, Oklahoma State University
2012-2014 Associate Dean, Graduate College, Oklahoma State University
2014-2015 Acting Dean, Graduate College, Oklahoma State University
2015-2023 Senior Associate Dean, Graduate College, Oklahoma State University
2018-2022 Interim Director, MPH Program, Oklahoma State University
2023-2024 Interim Dean, Graduate College, Oklahoma State University

Research Interests:

Race and Ethnicity, Social Psychology, Gender, Theory, Social Movements, Historical Sociology

Dr. Monica Whitham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. Using experimental and survey methodology, she takes a social psychological approach to the study of groups, communities, and social networks. Broadly, her work examines processes through which social actors form, maintain, and utilize social connections in order to achieve individual and collective goals. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and has been published in top sociology journals, including the American Sociological Review, Social Psychology Quarterly, and City & Community.

Research Interests:

Social Psychology, Group Processes, Community and Urban Sociology, Rural Soicology, Social Networks, Social Exchange, Prosocial Behavior, Quantitative Methods, Experimental Research, Survey Research