Taylor Laemmli

Education

Ph.D., Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2025
M.A., Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016
B.A., Sociology and German Studies, Macalester College, 2011

Biography

Dr. Taylor Laemmli joined the Baylor faculty after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2025. Her research examines the reproduction of inequality, often focusing on how people’s strategies for negotiating unequal social relations are implicated in their own and others’ domination. Her work engages with diverse areas of sociology, including economic sociology, stratification, class, culture, work, elites, consumption, and social theory. Her award-winning research has appeared in Sociological Theory, Sociological Science, Socius, and Sociological Forum. 

Dr. Laemmli is completing three major book projects. In Borrowing Class (invited by the University of Chicago Press), she theorizes forms of temporary class mobility that can augment our capacity for long-term class mobility, reshape our classed self-understandings, and commit us to existing social institutions. In Professional Help, she examines the relation between class elites and the professionals who make their lives run. And in The Sociology of Makeup, co-written with Dr. Mustafa Emirbayer, she explores cosmetic makeup with an intersectional and field-theoretic lens.

Recent Publications

Laemmli, Taylor. (2024). “Class Experience Mobility through Consumption, Work, and Relationships". Sociological Theory, 42(3), 231-255.

• Shils-Coleman Award for Best Student Paper, ASA Section on Theory, 2024
• Richard A. Peterson Award for Best Student Paper, ASA Section on Culture, 2024
• Robert D. Mare Graduate Paper Award – Honorable Mention, ASA Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility, 2024
• Best Student Paper Award - Honorable Mention, ASA Section on Consumers and Consumption, 2023

Laemmli, Taylor. (2024). “Classed Burdens: Accessing Unemployment Insurance during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Sociological Science 11:114-137.

 Laemmli, Taylor. (2023). “Workers and Their Foes: Customer Scapegoats in the Service Triad.” Socius 9. 

• Harry Braverman Award for best graduate student paper, SSSP Labor Studies Division, 2022

Laemmli, Taylor, Eric Grodsky, and Lyn C. Macgregor.  (2022). “Going Places: First-Generation College Students Framing Higher Education.” Sociological Forum 37(4):972-994.