Adia Harvey Wingfield

Adia Harvey Wingfield

Vice Dean of Faculty Development and Diversity
Professor of Sociology
Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts & Sciences
PhD, Johns Hopkins University

contact info:

office hours:

  • Tuesdays from 12-1 pm, by appointment only

mailing address:

  • Washington University
    MSC 1112-228-04
    One Brookings Drive
    St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

​Professor Wingfield specializes in research that examines the ways intersections of race, gender, and class affect social processes at work.

Adia Harvey Wingfield is the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts & Sciences and Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research examines how and why racial and gender inequality persists in professional occupations. Professor Wingfield has lectured internationally on her research in this area, and her work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals including Annual Review of Sociology, Gender & Society, and American Sociological Review. She has served as President of both Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) and the Southern Sociological Society (SSS), and is an elected member of the Sociological Research Association. In addition to her academic scholarship, Professor Wingfield writes regularly for mainstream outlets including Slate, The Atlantic, Vox, and Harvard Business Review. She is the recipient of multiple awards including the 2013 Richard A. Lester Award from Princeton University for her book No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men’s Work; the 2018 Public Understanding of Sociology award from the American Sociological Association; and the 2019 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) for her most recent book, Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy. 

Media

From our podcast:

Hold That Thought Podcast

Inequality at Work

Sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield documents the subtle and pervasive ways that black men continue to face inequality in the workplace.

in the news:

Wingfield’s ‘Gray Areas’ provides road map for dismantling workplace disparities

Wingfield elected president of American Sociological Association

Racial equality in the U.S. labor movement

Wingfield honored by American Sociological Association

Back to Ampersand
Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy

Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy

Adia Harvey Wingfield

What happens to black health care professionals in the new economy, where work is insecure and organizational resources are scarce? In Flatlining, Adia Harvey Wingfield exposes how hospitals, clinics, and other institutions participate in “racial outsourcing,” relying heavily on black doctors, nurses, technicians, and physician assistants to do “equity work”—extra labor that makes organizations and their services more accessible to communities of color. Wingfield argues that as these organizations become more profit driven, they come to depend on black health care professionals to perform equity work to serve increasingly diverse constituencies. Yet black workers often do this labor without recognition, compensation, or support. Operating at the intersection of work, race, gender, and class, Wingfield makes plain the challenges that black employees must overcome and reveals the complicated issues of inequality in today’s workplaces and communities.