I am a cultural, computational, and medical sociologist. My research investigates mental health and illness through a cultural lens, namely (1) how the cultural context influences mental health experiences and decision-making and (2) how mental health operates as a cultural framework. In my ongoing book project, I document cultural change around mental health and illness by applying computational text analysis to the news media and social media.

I’m also passionate about equitable and inclusive teaching, particularly of quantitative methods and statistical software.

I have a PhD in Sociology from Stanford University and BA in Sociology and Spanish from Wellesley College.

Contact me at aljohnson [at] lehigh [dot] edu

My academic interests fall into three main areas:

Research on mental health

How are mental health and illness conceptualized in our cultural imagination?

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Research on gender

How do young people make sense of gender (inequality)?

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Teaching and learning

How can our sociology classrooms (especially our quantitative methods) be more inclusive and equitable?

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Recent Publications

*please contact me for access to paywalled papers

Deportation threat predicts Latino US citizens and noncitizens’ psychological distress, 2011 to 2018

with Asad L. Asad, Neil Lewis, Jr., and Christopher Levesque. PNAS. 121(9):e2306554121.

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Changes in Mental Health and Treatment, 1997-2017

Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 62(1):53-68.

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The Agency Myth: Persistence in Individual Explanations for Gender Inequality

with Emily Carian. Social Problems. 69(1):123-142.

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All images courtesy of Unsplash.