Maddie Kerr is a second-year Sociology PhD student, Chancellor’s Fellow, and NSF Graduate Research Fellow. They earned their B.A. in Sociology from Northwestern University. They are broadly interested in how expert knowledge about health, gender, and disability is produced within and beyond scientific fields. Their master’s project, based on interviews and qualitative content analysis, examines how experts negotiate social and biomedical meanings of disability through struggles over the recognition of health disparities affecting disabled people.

Maddie’s previous research covers an eclectic range of topics, including the construction of evidence and expertise in contemporary “debates” about conversion therapy, contentious scientific-medical-political discourses concerning the intersection of autism and gender identity, and experiences of chronic illness and ableism in academia. Their work has been published in The Sociological Quarterly, Sociology of Health & Illness, Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, and Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.

Maddie is always eager to collaborate and chat with others who share overlapping interests!

Recent publications:

Kerr, M. (2026). Evidence, expertise, and exploration: Politics of knowledge in gender therapy. The Sociological Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2026.2656897.

Kerr, M. (2025). Invisibilization under the microscope: Experiences of PhD students with chronic illness. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 19(2), 146–158. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000643

Kerr, M. and Rebecca Ewert. (2025). Constructing the autistic-transgender intersection: A critical discourse analysis. Sociology of Health and Illness, 47, e70063. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.70063.