Theodora K. Hurley (2024)

Theodora K. Hurley is a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Chicago. She works in the areas of health and medicine, gender and sexuality, and social studies of knowledge. Underpinning her work is an interest in how institutions, inequalities, and different forms of knowledge shape health, bodies, and identities.

Her dissertation research uses ethnographic and interview methods to understand how different medical knowledges, practices, and institutions interact. Using multi-sited case studies of herbal medicine and homebirth midwifery, she studies how contemporary participants in alternative medicine construct alternative bodies of health knowledge and fight for the legitimacy of alternatives that deviate from mainstream medical ideas and practices. Asking how and why people reject mainstream institutions in favor of alternative forms of knowledge and action, this research develops theorizations of larger contemporary shifts in social authority, governance, and public life. Another line of her research uses statistical and mixed methods to investigate why bisexual people have worse health outcomes than straight, gay, and lesbian people alike.

She is Associate Editor of the American Journal of Sociology and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Bowdoin College and an M.A. from the University of Chicago, both in sociology.