The Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame is proud to announce the appointments of two exceptional scholars—Tim Hallett and Catherine Riegle-Crumb—as Full Professors. Their arrival marks a significant strengthening of the department’s expertise in culture, education, inequality, interaction, and organizational sociology.
Catherine Riegle-Crumb joins Notre Dame from the University of Texas at Austin. A nationally respected scholar of education, gender, and racial inequality, Professor Riegle-Crumb has built an influential research program focused on the structural and cultural dynamics that shape students’ educational experiences and trajectories in STEM fields. Her work has been widely published in top sociology and education journals like the American Journal of Sociology, Gender & Society, Educational Researcher, and Sociology of Education.
She brings a remarkable track record of external funding, having served as Principal Investigator or Co-PI on numerous major projects funded by the National Science Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation, among others. Her studies—ranging from gender essentialism in education to engineering identity formation among young women of color—have shaped national conversations about inclusion and equity in STEM.
Professor Riegle-Crumb said she’s “so excited to join the Sociology department at the University of Notre Dame. I have long admired how Notre Dame’s faculty conduct innovative and important research across the discipline and are clearly committed to teaching and mentoring students. Additionally, there is simply no better to place to be a sociologist of education.”
Professor Riegle-Crumb will also serve as the incoming Director of the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO) at Notre Dame, where she will lead one of the country’s premier centers dedicated to the sociological study of education. “I am thrilled to become the new director of CREO,” she said, “to help continue its long-held mission of producing research that makes a difference towards promoting equity.”
Tim Hallett joins Notre Dame from Indiana University. He is internationally recognized as the leading scholar of inhabited institutionalism, a framework that reimagines how institutions are not just structures “out there” but are lived, shaped, and transformed through local interaction and meaning-making. His pathbreaking research has deepened our understanding of how institutions take their form through the actions of individuals working together—in harmony or in tension. His work shows how these interactions are essential for our understanding of how organizations work.
A prolific ethnographer and theorist, Professor Hallett’s work has appeared in top journals such as American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Symbolic Interaction. His award-winning article “The Myth Incarnate” and recent co-authored book Group Life: An Invitation to Local Sociology reflect his signature approach of linking micro-interaction to meso-level organizational dynamics. Hallett will contribute centrally to Notre Dame’s strengths in both cultural sociology and the sociology of education and will be an important intellectual bridge across research on meaning, institutions, and social change.
“I feel blessed to join Notre Dame,” said Hallett. “The Sociology department is stellar and it keeps getting better and better. The faculty, staff, and students are excellent at their work, and as importantly, they are generous and kind people. I know that Notre Dame will be a wonderful home. The department excels in my areas of interest: Culture, education, organizations, and social interaction. These come together in “inhabited institutionalism,” and I am excited to bring the “II school” to Notre Dame, where it will flourish.”
“It is a big year for Notre Dame Sociology. We are thrilled that Professors Hallett and Riegle-Crumb have joined our department,” said Professor Terence McDonnell, Chair of the Department of Sociology. “They are not only outstanding scholars but also deeply committed mentors and institution-builders. Their presence will enrich our department and our broader academic community for years to come.”
Both Hallett and Riegle-Crumb will begin in Fall 2025. Please join us in welcoming these two distinguished sociologists to the Notre Dame family.