Julia Adams (sociologist)

Adams received a National Science Foundation grant in 2013 to conduct a study of the relationship between gender bias and the portrayal of academics in Wikipedia She collaborated with Hannah Bruckner of New York University-Abu Dhabi. Some of the resulting work has been published in peer-reviewed articles.

In an interview with Marilyn Wilkes for the MacMillan Report at Yale University in 2010, Adams discusses her research regarding high level forms of patriarchal politics and the historical sociology of family relations in early modern states, as well as the contradictions of agency in contemporary America. This research was the background for the development of her book, The Familial State, which focuses on elite families in large scale political development in European countries. She found this research important for both academic reasons, and for the public to have a better understanding of the world around them. Adams often uses the term scholarship in her research. Scholarship, according to Adams, often reflects patriarchal power within twenty-first century inequality and capitalism. By studying Holland’s renowned families, who were both state-builders and merchant capitalists during the seventeenth century Dutch Golden Age, Adams discovered how the family patriarchs shaped the first great wave of European colonialism which led to the widespread influence of European political development in the modern world.

She was president of the Social Science History Association (SSHA) from 2008 to 2009. Her presidential address covered historical sociological topics including agency, labor, and principal-agent relations. In 2010, she was appointed Joseph C. Fox Fellowship Director at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies (Yale). In 2013, Professor Benjamin Cashore was appointed as the new Director.

In 2005, Adams published two books on historical sociology: The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe as the sole author, and Remaking Modernity with colleagues Ann Shola Orloff and Elisabeth S. Clemens. The latter book surveys the field of historical sociology and proposes a third wave for historical interpretation and analysis in the social sciences.

Adams became an assistant professor at the University of Michigan in 1992. She was later promoted to become an associate professor. She moved to Yale University in 2004.

Julia Potter Adams (born July 11, 1957) is an American sociologist who works in the area of comparative and historical sociology. Julia Adams is a professor of Sociology. She conducts research in the areas of state building, gender and family, social theory and knowledge, early modern European politics, and Colonialism and empire. Her current research focuses on the historical sociology of agency relations and modernity, gender, race, and the representation of academic knowledge on Wikipedia and on other digital platforms. Adams is Professor of Sociology and International & Area Studies and Head of Grace Hopper College, Yale. She also co-directs YaleCHESS (Center for Historical Enquiry and the Social Sciences) and is on the Board of Reed College.