About

Professor Kerrissey is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the UMass Labor Center. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses, including Labor History, Comparative Labor Movements, the Sociology of Work, Food and Labor, Writing in Sociology, and Teaching Sociology.

Education

Ph.D., Sociology, University of California–Irvine, 2012

M.A., Sociology, University of California— Irvine, 2006

B.S., Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, 2000

Research Areas

Labor Movements, Inequality, Work, Political Sociology, Social Movements and Collective Behavior, Race and Gender

Current Research Projects

-- Several projects analyzing administrative data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to better understand work dynamics in the public sector, including race and gender wage gaps and the role of unions. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation and co-authored with Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Anthony Rainey, and Steve Boutcher.

-- Book: Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement, co-authored with Judith Stepan-Norris and forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Analyzing union trends from 1900 to 2015, this book analyzes why workers were able to successfully form unions in some industries— and others were not.

Select Publications

Hammond, Clare and Jasmine Kerrissey. Forthcoming. "At Work in a Pandemic: Black Workers' Experiences of Safety on the Job" Labor Studies Journal 

Kerrissey, Jasmine and Nathan Meyers. 2021. “Race, Gender and Earnings: The Role of Unions in the Public Sector” Industrial and Labor Relations Review

Kerrissey, Jasmine, Tiamba Wilkerson, Nathan Meyers. 2020. “The Political and Civic Lives of Public Sector Workers: Unions and Public Service Motivation” Sociological Forum 36(1): 92-110.

Kerrissey, Jasmine, Eve Weinbaum, Clare Hammonds, Tom Juravich, and Dan Clawson, eds. 2020. Labor in the Time of Trump. Cornell University Press.

Kerrissey, Jasmine, and Evan Schofer. 2018. "Labor Unions and Political Participation in Comparative Perspective." Social Forces 97(1): 427-464.

Kerrissey, Jasmine and Jeff Schuhrke.  2016.  “Life Chances:  Worker Fatalities in Less Developed Countries” Social Forces. 95(1): 191-216.

Kerrissey, Jasmine.  2015. “Income Inequality and Collective Labor Rights” American Sociological Review. 80(3): 626-653.

          - Awarded 2016 Best International Paper for the Labor and Employment Relations Association

Kerrissey, Jasmine and Evan Schofer.  2013.  “Unions and Political Participation in the U.S.” Social Forces. 91(3): 895-928.