Natalie Bourman-Karns

Cohort

2019

Subfields

Political Sociology, Quantitative Methods, Social Movements, Stratification and Inequality

Profile

Natalie Bourman-Karns (she/her) joined the Sociology PhD program in 2019. She is a University Presidential Fellow whose primary research interests include social movements (protests, allies, leadership), power dynamics, social roles and status, emotions, quantitative methods, and qualitative methods. 

She received her B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology with a minor in Psychology from Lehigh University in 2017. Prior to entering the graduate program at Notre Dame, Natalie worked as a Data and Volunteer Coordinator for a Minneapolis-based youth education non-profit. 

Her Master’s thesis project explored the relationship between emotional reactions to gun violence and social movement mobilization. She is currently working on her dissertation in which she investigates the conditions under which spontaneous leaders emerge at protest events, as well as the ways in which individuals negotiate their social role at protests. The project also considers the effect of a protester’s status as an ally in how they negotiate their role or engage in leadership behaviors.