Katie R. Billings
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Office: Tisch Learning Center (TLC) 206B
Telephone: (518) 580-5451
Email: kbillings@skidmore.edu
EDUCATION:
- PhD in Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2025
- MA in Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2019
- BA in Psychology, Dartmouth College, 2016
Personal Website: http://www.katierbillings.weebly.com
RESEARCH & TEACHING INTERESTS
Medical Sociology, Mental Health, Law & Society, Race, Class, & Gender, Stratification, Social Psychology, Qualitative Methods
BIOGRAPHY:
Katie R. Billings received her PhD in sociology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research addresses the creation and perpetuation of inequalities in health and in the law. She explores how social identities shape individuals’ beliefs, reasoning, and behaviors, and how these individual variations then exacerbate social inequalities using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her dissertation, “Surviving Suicide,” examines how social identities affect cultural narratives about suicide experiences and how these narratives can inform suicide prevention and post-vention strategies.
Billings’ research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Sociological Association Culture Section, and she was recognized as the most promising junior health scholar by the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences in 2024. Her research is published in Social Science & Medicine, the Law & Society Review, Sociological Perspectives, and The Utah Law Review. Billings is a proud first-generation college student.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Billings, Katie R. [Forthcoming]. “Mental illness and culture” in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society, edited by W. C. Cockerham, R. Dingwall, and S. R. Quah. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- Billings, Katie R. and Kathryne M. Young. 2022. “How cultural capital shapes mental healthcare seeking in college.” Sociological Perspectives, 65(4) 637–60.
- Statz, Michele, Katie R. Billings, Jordan Wolf. 2022. “Rurality as concordance: Mental healthservice delivery for rural survivors of intimate partner violence.” Sociological Perspectives, 65(3) 485–505.
- Billings, Katie R., David A. Cort, Tannuja D. Rozario, and Derek P. Siegel. 2021. “Stigma beliefs in context: Country and regional variation in the effects of instrumental stigma beliefs on protective sexual behaviors in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Southern Africa.”Social Science & Medicine, 269(2021) 113565.
- Billings, Katie R. 2021. “Stigma in class: mental illness, social class, and tokenism in elite college culture.”Sociological Perspectives, 64(2) 238–57.
- Young, Kathryne M. and Katie R. Billings. 2020. “Legal consciousness and cultural capital.”Law & Society Review, 54(1) 33–65.