Welcome
I am an Associate Professor of Sociology and an Associate Faculty member in the Women, Gender, & Sexualities Studies department at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. I received my Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2013. Formerly, I worked as a Research Sociologist at United States Census Bureau in the Center for Survey Measurement, a qualitative center hosted in the Research & Development directorate.
My research traces how institutions such as medicine, science, the nation-state, and media differentially construct bodies, behaviors, and identities and how actors react to, cope with, or resist these definitions. My first book, The Prescription-to-Prison Pipeline: An Intersectional Analysis of the Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain, is under contract with Duke University Press. This work explores the intersection between the opioid crisis and the prison industrial complex and how gender, class, and race impact how individuals are impacted by these structures. I am working on a second book on the subject of bio-hacking and body-hacking and how reshaping the human body establishes particular ideals of health, beauty, and a productive society. I have also embarked on a recent project with KC Tenants to explore how their organizing efforts, basebuilding, and direct actions have sought to promote racial equity across the region. Across my research and professional experience, I have developed methodological skills in content and discourse analysis, cognitive and semi-structured interviewing, focus groups, survey design, as well as ethnography.
If you have any questions about this site, my work, or my teaching resource blog, "My Sociological Activation", feel free to contact me at smirnovam @ umkc . edu.
My research traces how institutions such as medicine, science, the nation-state, and media differentially construct bodies, behaviors, and identities and how actors react to, cope with, or resist these definitions. My first book, The Prescription-to-Prison Pipeline: An Intersectional Analysis of the Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain, is under contract with Duke University Press. This work explores the intersection between the opioid crisis and the prison industrial complex and how gender, class, and race impact how individuals are impacted by these structures. I am working on a second book on the subject of bio-hacking and body-hacking and how reshaping the human body establishes particular ideals of health, beauty, and a productive society. I have also embarked on a recent project with KC Tenants to explore how their organizing efforts, basebuilding, and direct actions have sought to promote racial equity across the region. Across my research and professional experience, I have developed methodological skills in content and discourse analysis, cognitive and semi-structured interviewing, focus groups, survey design, as well as ethnography.
If you have any questions about this site, my work, or my teaching resource blog, "My Sociological Activation", feel free to contact me at smirnovam @ umkc . edu.