Emily Ruppel is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in the political economic moorings of embodied identities, especially gender, sexuality, and disability. 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. Other projects address rising healthcare spending, causal effects of social networks on health, and the co-construction of gender and autism in medical discourse. Her research has been funded by Policy Research, Inc. and recognized by the Disability in Society section of the American Sociological Association. She holds an M.A. from Berkeley and a B.A. from Smith College, both in sociology.

Publications:

Lara-Millán, Armando and Emily H. Ruppel [equally co-authored]. Forth. "The American 'Doc Fix': Incremental Policy Change and the Growth of US Healthcare Spending." Forthcoming at Economy & Society.

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. 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.