Nicole Muffitt
Graduate Student
Sociology
Contact
Building & Room:
4176A BSB
Email:
About
Previous degrees:
Specialty Areas:
precarious work, organizations, inequality
Research interests:
Nicole Muffitt is a Ph.D student in sociology. She studies work, organizations, and the economy, emphasizing the organizational and economic constraints that in turn produce precarious work. She is currently working on a mixed-methods paper that conceptualizes paid plasma donation as a kind of informal, precarious work juxtaposing the impoverished people who are targeted by plasma donation firms and the pro-social messaging these organizations use normalize the commodification of the human body. She has also conducted a pilot study on multi-level marketing organizations using ethnographic data examining how distributors of a skincare and cosmetics multi-level marketing organization rationalize their calling or “vocation” in this precarious and unpredictable kind of work.
Nicole’s research interests include the sociology of work, precarious work, organizations, economic sociology, sociology of culture, and inequality.
As a member of the UIC community, Nicole has served the department of sociology as a member of the Graduate Student Council and the UIC Senate. She supports the UIC community through her work on an upcoming Campus Care healthcare gap assessment which will identify and analyze the multiple factors complicating healthcare access for UIC students. An engaged sociologist, Nicole has worked with Legal Aid Chicago to produce a legal needs gap assessment to improve Chicagoans' access to legal support.