Jennifer Lois

Jen Lois is Professor of Sociology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. Professor Lois is a field researcher, observing first-hand and participating in interesting areas of social life.

In her first project, she spent six years studying a volunteer, mountain-environment search-and-rescue group. Through this research, she became interested in gender, heroism, and the sociology of emotions, focusing much of her work on these issues. This project turned into a book, HEROIC EFFORTS, which was published in 2003 (NYU Press), and in 2006 was honored with the Outstanding Recent Contribution Award from the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Emotions Section.

HOME IS WHERE THE SCHOOL IS (2012, NYU Press), Professor Lois's second book, is based on her 10 years of interview-based research with homeschooling mothers and focuses on how the experience of motherhood is fraught with temporal-emotional conflict.

Professor Lois's newest project is on romance novel writers. Along with her co-researcher, Professor Joanna Gregson (Pacific Lutheran University), she attends romance conferences and interviews writers about the stigma of the career and how the preponderance of women in the industry affects the subculture as a whole.

When she's not spending time with her family or reading romance novels, Professor Lois teaches courses in gender, deviance, and social psychology.