Curricula Vitae in Sociology

Name	Personal Focus	Summary
Professor James M Adams Professor	Department cluster: Populations & Health	Broadly, Professor adams studies how networks constrain or promote the diffusion of information and/or diseases through populations. Much of this work has focused on HIV/AIDS and Covid-19 among populations in the US and Sub-Saharan Africa. Recently, his work has focused more on the integrative patterns and processes in problem-focused areas of science that draw from many academic disciplines (e.g., HIV/AIDS, demography, the environment).
Dr. Jennifer March Augustine Associate Professor	Demographic characteristics	Dr. Augustine's research examines the transmission of advantage and disadvantage across generations in U.S. families. She focuses, in particular, on how mothers' demographic characteristics shape family level processes, which in turn, lead to disparities in young children's health and academic outcomes.
Nia Baker Research Assistant Professor
Dr. Laura Aufderheide Brashears, PhD Senior Instructor	student and racial/ethnic identities and social networks of self-declared STEM college students, role of social cognition, personality, and social structural constraints on social network outcomes	Laura Aufderheide Brashears is Instructor of Sociology and Graduate Faculty at the University of South Carolina. She also currently serves as Managing Editor of Social Psychology Quarterly, the flagship social psychological journal of the American Sociological Association.
Professor Matthew Edward Brashears Professor	Social networks	Dr. Brashears is primarily interested in social networks, with particular emphasis on the connections between networks and social psychology. His current research focuses on linking cognition to social network structure and studying the effects of error and error correction on diffusion dynamics.He uses a variety of experimental, quasi-experimental, and non-experimental methods to investigate these issues both with student populations and representative samples of larger groups.
Dr. Rebekah Kathleen Broussard Assistant Professor	analyzes how women navigate social networks to gain access to health-related information, examines fertility desires and intentions within a reproductive justice framework	Kathleen Broussard completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin (2022), where she specialized in Demography as a Fellow at the Population Research Center. Prior to this, she earned an MA from the University of Chicago.
Erin Davenport Instructor		Erin Davenport is an Instructor in the Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences. She earned her PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill (May 2023), MA from UNC-Chapel Hill (2020), and BA from Davidson College (2018). With all Erin Davenport's teaching her goal is to empower students to think for themselves while grounding them in standard practices of the sociology. Davenport values being accessible, fair, and helpful to all students.
Dr. Mathieu Deflem Professor	Law and Social Control, Popular Culture, Police and Terrorism	Dr.Deflem's research areas include popular culture, sociology of law and social control, and sociological theory. His most recent research deals with popular culture, celebrity, the policing of terrorism, theories in the sociology of law, and international policing.
Allison Dunatchik Assistant Professor
Dr. Andrea Henderson-Platt Associate Professor	Religion and Cognitive Function among Older Adults: Differences by race and gender, Religion and Tobacco Use and Policy: Differences by race and SES, Historical Trauma among African Americans Living in the South	Andrea K. Henderson received her PhD in Sociology at the University of Texas Austin in 2011. She joined the Department of Sociology at SC in 2012 as a Henri Montcrief Treadwell Research Assistant Professor. She has been a member of the faculty since 2013.
Brian Levy Assistant Professor
Dr. Joseph Michael Quinn Assistant Professor	cultural evolution, identity, social networks	Joseph Quinn received his PhD in sociology in 2022 from Duke University, specializing in social network analysis and social psychology. He studies when and how environments and social ties shape emotions toward/interactions between members of different groups, and how micro-level beliefs and behaviors influence macro-level social inequality.
Dr. Brent Simpson Department Chair/Professor	Social Psychology, Social Networks, Social Order, Prosocial Behavior, Trust,, Cooperation, Collective Action, Altruism	BRENT T. SIMPSON, PhD. Cornell University (2001) is Professor of Sociology. His primary research interests include social psychology and various forms of pro-social behavior (such as altruism, trust, generosity, and cooperation).
Shane Thye Professor	Power and Status, foundations of trust and commitment in social relations, economic theories of discrimination	Professor Thye earned a bachelor's degree in experimental psychology from the University of Iowa where he also received his PhD. He is interested in a broad array of group processes and quantitative research techniques. He is currently conducting research on commitment in exchange networks, power from status in bargaining relations, status organizing processes, and collective action in social traps. He is also interested in the development and spread of 'paranormal' beliefs.
Jun Zhao Assistant Professor		Jun Zhao will be joining the Department of Socialogy as Assistant Professor Fall 2023. Jun's research interests include social networks, social psychology, race, gender and health.
Hanne van der Iest Instructor		Hanne van der Iest’s educational background is in both Sociology and Anthropology. Her research interests center primarily on cooperation and its evolution in communities and networks, social network methodology, and the spread of attitudes and behaviors through networks over time.