Julia T. Thomas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and a faculty affiliate of the Criminal Justice Studies Program and the Owens Institute for Behavioral Research at the University of Georgia.  Her work focuses on the influence of racial inequality, current and historical, on patterns of crime and the criminal justice system in the United States. Her research leverages novel data and econometric modeling techniques and…

Gillian Slee is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia. Her work focuses on understanding and ameliorating inequality in American state processes. To this end, she has studied issues and institutions with far-reaching consequences: public defense, eviction, child protective services, and parole. With each of her projects, Slee aims to humanize key state processes and demonstrate how institutions’ relational dynamics…

Peng Huang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia. He received his PhD in Sociology and an MS in Statistics from the University of California, Irvine, trained in the Networks, Computation, and Social Dynamcis Lab. He also holds BAs in Sociology and Economics from Peking University.  Huang’s research focuses on social networks and population dynamics, adopting a relational and structural approach to explore…

Dr. Pridemore is Department Head and Marienthal Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of Georgia. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Society of Criminology. Dr. Pridemore received his PhD in 2000 from the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany – SUNY and spent 2003-2004 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard in the Davis Center for Russian and…

Vanessa Gonlin's research and teaching areas of expertise include racial identity(ies), colorism, and interracial relationships, with a particular focus on Black peoples and multiracials. She determines the outcomes of racial identity dimensions that do not always align, documents the impact of colorism and hairism, and highlights how social hierarchies operate within interracial relationship dynamics. Dr. Gonlin earned her PhD…

Dr. Rogers is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and assists with the Criminal Justice Program. She is currently teaching Introductory Sociology online, Youth Subcultures, and Research Methods in Criminal Justice. She also supervises Criminal Justice Internship students. Dr. Rogers is also the Undergraduate Coordinator for the Sociology Department.

Man Kit (Karlo) Lei is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Georgia. Dr. Lei's teaching and research areas encompass diverse topics, including the sociology of health, criminology, structural inequality, family and neighborhood studies, and quantitative methods. Dr. Lei’s research is interdisciplinary in scope, integrating sociology, health, family, and biosocial science to…

Diana Graizbord is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. During the 2025-2026 academic year she will be a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Previously Diana was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  Diana earned her Ph.D in Sociology from Brown University where she was an NSF-IGERT Fellow in Development…

Dr. Patricia Richards, Professor of Sociology and Women's & Gender Studies, has been at the University of Georgia since 2002. She currently serves as the director of the Institute for Women's & Gender Studies. She also serves (with Sharmila Rudrappa of the University of Illinois Chicago) as co-editor of Gender & Society.  Dr. Richards is an affiliated faculty member with the Latin American and Caribbean Studies …