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Julia Adams is the Margaret H. Marshall Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She teaches and conducts research in the areas of state formation, social theory and knowledge, family, sex and gender, early modern European politics, and colonialism and empire. Her current research focuses on patrimonial politics in world history, the sociology of agency relations and modernity, and the representation of academic knowledge on Wikipedia and other digital platforms. Adams co-directs the Yale Center for Historical Enquiry and the Social Sciences (YaleCHESS) and serves as a trustee of Reed College, her alma mater.
Adams received a National Science Foundation grant for collaborative research with Hannah Brückner on “Wikipedia and the Democratization of Academic Knowledge.” Her book The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Cornell University Press, 2005) won the Gaddis Smith Book Prize. With Mounira Maya Charrad, she co-edited Patrimonial Capitalism and Empire (2015) and Patrimonial Power in the Modern World (2011). With Elisabeth S. Clemens and Ann Shola Orloff, she edited Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology (Duke University Press, 2005). Her work has twice won the Barrington Moore Jr. Award for Best Article from the American Sociological Association section in Comparative and Historical Sociology. At Yale, Adams has chaired the Department of Sociology and the Council of Heads of College; directed the Division of the Social Sciences, the Fox International Fellowship Program, and the International Affairs Council and European Studies Councils at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies; and served in the Provost’s Office in 2013-14. From 2014 to 2024, she was the last Master of Calhoun College and the first Head of Grace Hopper College.
Explore Yale's 2026 report on eroding public trust in US higher education, pinpointing costs, admissions opacity, and grade inflation as culprits, with actionable reforms for colleges nationwide.
Explore Yale University's Committee on Trust report proposing admissions transparency, grading standards, affordability boosts, and more to combat declining confidence in higher education.
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