Kasey Ray, Ph.D.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Kasey Ray is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Kent State University Geauga and Twinsburg Academic Center. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Akron, specializing in gender, race, class and deviance. As a first-generation college student, Dr. Ray is a fierce advocate for student-centered diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Kent State University.

Dr. Ray’s research focuses on social class, welfare participation, and spatial inequalities. In her most recent publication, “It’s Embarrassing to Come Here: Welfare-to-work, Emotion Rules, and Emotional Organization” (2022), Dr. Ray and her co-authors examined the ways in which welfare-to-work managers emphasized certain emotional displays and discouraged others for welfare participants. Specifically, they examined how more powerful others (program managers) defined the emotional norms for less powerful others (welfare clients).   

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

Social Inequalities (Gender, Race, Class)

Poverty and Welfare Participation

Spatial Inequalities

Deviant Behavior

Social Issues

EDUCATION

Ph.D., 2015, The University of Akron, Department of Sociology

M.A., 2012, The University of Akron, Department of Sociology

B.A., 2008, Baldwin Wallace University, Department of Political Science

PUBLICATIONS

Turgeon, Brianna, Kaitlyn Root, Kasey Ray, Tiffany Taylor. 2022. “It’s Embarrassing to Come Here”: Welfare-to-work, Emotion Rules, and Emotional Organization.” Poverty and Public Policy 14(1):8-24.   

Church, Jacob, Kaitlyn Root, Tiffany Taylor, and Kasey Ray. 2020. “It’s all about Teaching them Soft Skills”: Cultural Capital in Welfare-to-Work Soft Skills Discourse.” Sociological Imagination 56(1):80-97.

Ray, Kasey. 2020. “The Flawed Assumptions of Welfare Participation: A Comparative Analysis of Ohio and North Carolina Counties.” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 47(1): 5-26.

Ray, Kasey (Lansberry), Tiffany Taylor, and Elizabeth Seale. 2016. “Welfare and the Culture of Conservatism: A Contextual Analysis of Welfare-to-Work Participation in North Carolina.” Journal of Poverty 21(1):20-41.

Gross, Christy, Brianna Turgeon, Tiffany Taylor, and Kasey Ray (Lansberry). 2014. “State Intervention in Intensive Mothering: Neo-Liberalism, New Paternalism, and Poor Mothers in Ohio.” Intensive Mothering: The Cultural Contradictions of Modern Motherhood. Editor: Linda Ennis. Demeter Press.