Lacey Moore received her PhD in Sociology at the University of Georgia in 2024. Her research utilizes a mixed methods approach to answer sociological questions in crime, deviance, punishment, education, and inequality with a specific focus on higher education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. Lacey's dissertation uses survey data and semi-structured interviews to explore the motivations and non-material resources leading to participation in higher education for formerly incarcerated individuals and to examine the mechanisms through which participation in higher education reduces recidivism and leads to other positive outcomes. Her work appears in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation and has been presented at the annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology and the Southern Sociological Society.

Makeiva Jenkins, M.AT., MA, is a doctoral candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of Georgia, where she also earned her MA in Sociology and her Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies. She also earned her MA in African American Studies from Georgia State University in 2017. Her research interests include race, gender, class, inequality, punishment, culture, media, and social psychology. She has taught several courses at the University of Georgia, including African American Society (SOCI (AFAM) 2020) and Race and Ethnicity (SOCI (AFAM) 2820). 

Makeiva is interested in examining how race, culture, law, and economics impact the lived experiences of single black stay-at-home moms (SAHMs). Her dissertation investigates how they successfully navigate these roles and how race, culture, gender, and inequality combine to influence and impact their experiences and decisions. Through qualitative interviews, she studies how these women challenge racialized and sexualized stereotypes by creating counternarratives. She has received funding to support this research from the University of Georgia's Women and Girls in Georgia Conference (WAGG) Grant and their Summer Doctoral Research Assistantship.

 Additionally, Makeiva's research has investigated the relationship between help-seeking behaviors and the ideal of the strong woman. In a first-authored paper, currently under a Revise and Resubmit at Dubois Review, we find using Du Bois' double consciousness that Black women worried about confirming negative stereotypes, that help-seeking would reflect negatively on their broader community, and that they allowed themselves to endure more mentally and emotionally before seeking help versus their White counterparts. However, both groups experienced a consciousness due to their marginalization relative to men. 

From 2021-2023, Makeiva served on several DEI committees and as Assistant Diversity Chair and Diversity Chair in the Sociology Graduate Student Society. Additionally, from 2020-2022, Makeiva served as a research assistant on an NSF-funded project that focused on developing strategies to combat harassment and discrimination in colleges of engineering. 

Sarah graduated with her PhD in sociology at the University of Georgia in May 2024. Her research broadly investigates the personal, social, and structural factors that facilitate and constrain health and well-being and she often uses social psychological theories to investigate her research questions. More specifically, her research focuses on how two fundamental social statuses - sexual orientation and gender identity - influence people's experiences of the social world. Most recently, her work focuses on health care access, utilization, and health outcomes of LGBTQIA+ populations. Sarah's dissertation is a multi-method inquiry into the how, why, and under what conditions lesbian women make decisions regarding accessing health care, and the role of patient-provider interaction in these decisions. 

Her work has been published in Sex Roles, and she has received support for her work through the University of Georgia's J. William Fanning Fellowship, the Research and Engagement in Diversity Seed Grant, and the University of Georgia Sociology Department Small Grants Fund.