Emily Ruppel is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UC Berkeley and incoming assistant professor at UC Davis (in fall 2026). She is interested in connections between political economic transformations and embodied identities, particularly gender, sexuality, and disability. She investigates these themes through three linked research programs on disability as an organizing principle of labor, on health in social context, and on gender and sexuality. Her dissertation focuses empirically on job training programs for disabled workers, using historical research to trace the growth of this industry since the 1970s and ethnographic fieldwork to investigate contemporary labor practices. She holds an M.A. from Berkeley and a B.A. from Smith College, both in sociology.

Publications:

Ruppel, Emily H. 2024. "How Work Becomes Invisible: The Erosion of the Wage Floor for Workers with Disabilities." American Sociological Review 89(5). doi:10.1177/00031224241268201.

Ruppel, Emily H. 2024. “Therapeutic Management in the Low-Wage Workplace.” Social Science & Medicine 352. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117026.

Lara-Millán, Armando and Emily H. Ruppel [equally co-authored]. 2024. "The American 'Doc Fix': Incremental Policy Change and the Growth of US Healthcare Spending." Economy & Society 53(2). doi:10.1080/03085147.2024.2336798.

Ruppel, Emily H. 2024. "The Making of a Reserve Army of Labor: Paradoxes of American Disability Policy." Critical Sociology. doi:10.1177/08969205241246446.

Ruppel, Emily H. 2023. “Disability and the State Production of Precarity.” Work and Occupations 51(4). doi:10.1177/07308884231207773.

Ruppel, Emily H., Claude Fischer, Stephanie Child, and Marian Botchway. 2022. “Distinct Aspects of Human Connection Associated with Subjective Well-Being.” Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health 2. doi:10.1016/j.ssmmh.2022.100143.

Ruppel, Emily H. 2022. “Turning Bourdieu Back Upon Sexual Field Theory.” Sexualities 25(5/6):546-562. doi:10.1177/1363460720976958.

Ruppel, Emily H., Stephanie Child, Claude S. Fischer, & Marian Botchway. 2022. “Causal Relationships between Social Networks and Health: A Comparison of Three Modeling Strategies.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 63(3):392-409. doi:10.1177/00221465211072310.

Child, Stephanie, Emily H. Ruppel, Michelle Albert, & Leora Lawton. 2022. “Network Support and Negative Life Events Associated with Chronic Cardiometabolic Disease Outcomes.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine 62(1):21-28. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2021.06.022.

Child, Stephanie, Emily H. Ruppel, Mia Zhong, & Leora Lawton. 2021. “Direct and Moderating Causal Effects of Network Support on Sleep Quality: Findings from the UC Berkeley Social Network Study.” Annals of Behavioral Medicine 55(5):446-459. doi:10.1093/abm/kaaa082.

Karpman, Hannah E., Emily H. Ruppel, & Maria Torres. 2018. “'It Wasn’t Feasible for Us': Queer Women of Color Navigating Family Formation.” Family Relations 67(1):118-131. doi:10.1111/fare.12303.

Ruppel, Emily H., Hannah E. Karpman, Carolyn E. Delk, & Mallory Merryman. 2017. “Online Maternity Information Seeking among Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer Women.” Midwifery 48:18-23. doi:10.1016/j.midw.2017.02.011.