Pamela Popielarz, PhD
Associate Professor & Director of Undergraduate Studies
Sociology
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Contact
Building & Room:
4150C BSB
Address:
1007 W Harrison St.
Email:
About
Pamela Popielarz is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). She studies organizations and their effects on racial/ethnic and gender inequality. Her work focuses largely on voluntary associations and uses a combination of institutional, critical, ecological, and social network theories to address not just what organizations do and who belongs to them, but how they go about their work, both formally and informally. Her research links organizational structures and practices, particularly those that are widely taken for granted or rationalized as ostensibly being efficient, with the reproduction of systemic inequalities by race/ethnicity and gender. Specifically, organizational structures and practices are the mechanisms by which legal, cognitive, and normative biases toward Whiteness and masculinity play out. Although her early-career research featured quantitative methods and complex survey data, her recent work uses qualitative methods and historical archival data. Popielarz’s current research focuses on nineteenth century American fraternal orders and their lasting impact on racial/ethnic and gender inequality in the business world. Her book, Order of Business: The Golden Age of Fraternity and Its Legacy of Inequality, is under contract with University of North Carolina Press. Popielarz’s research has been published in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Gender & Society, Social Networks, Business History, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Her research has received support from the National Science Foundation and the ASA Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline.
Popielarz has served her department in a variety of capacities, including as Associate Head, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and Director of Graduate Studies, and she was elected to several committees in UIC’s Graduate College. Professionally, she has served on awards committees for the ASA Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work and she is a former Associate Editor of the American Journal of Sociology.