The American Sociological Association Section on Aging and the Life Course has awarded the Outstanding Publication Award to Professor of Sociology Anne Barrett, Ph.D., for her research on aging and the life course.
Her award-winning paper, “Centering Age Inequality: Developing a Sociology-of-Age Framework,” was published in 2022 in the Annual Review of Sociology.
This research focuses on how age and its operation as an aspect of inequality have been largely neglected by sociologists, despite interest in inequalities of other types.
The mission of the ASA Section on Aging and the Life Course is to examine the interdependence between aging over the life course as a social process and societies and groups stratified by age.
“Building on the foundation laid by scholars of life course sociology, age studies, and gerontology, I propose a new framework for thinking about age,” Dr. Barrett said. “I provide some illustrations of ageism that could be useful and then develop my framework that describes age inequality as operating along three axes – it’s an institution, it’s a performance, and it’s an identity.”
Since the award’s inception in 1999, Dr. Barrett is the first professor from Florida State University to receive this honor.
Awardees are chosen for an outstanding recent contribution from the last three years to the field of the sociology of aging and the life course as determined by the Outstanding Publication Award Committee.
She was nominated by Richard Settersen, Jr., Ph.D., Professor and the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Oregon State University; Stefanie Möllborn, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University in Sweden; and John Reynolds, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology at Florida State University.
Dr. Barrett joined the College’s faculty in 2001, originally starting as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology. Since then, she has become the Mildred and Claude Pepper Eminent Scholar Chair in Gerontology, a Faculty Associate with FSU’s Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy, and was elected as a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.
Dr. Barrett also served as the Director of the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy from 2015 to 2021.
Before coming to FSU, Dr. Barrett received her Bachelor of Arts at the College of William and Mary in Sociology and Economics, was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Auckland with a focus in Women’s Studies and Sociology, and earned both her Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology from Duke University.
Dr. Barrett is an award-winning teacher and researcher who has won multiple awards, including the 2022 J. Michael Armer Faculty Teaching Award, the 2019 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award (Italy), and the 1993 Jeanne A. Ito Award from the College of William and Mary.
The award will be presented at the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) conference in Montreal in August 2024. To learn more about the American Sociological Association Section on Aging & the Life Course, visit asasalc.org.
For more information on the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy here on campus, visit pepperinstitute.fsu.edu. If you’re interested in FSU’s Sociology Department, visit coss.fsu.edu/sociology.