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Allison Pugh
Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University
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Professional Bio
Allison Pugh is Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. Her book The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton 2024) is based on a study of the standardization of work that relies on relationship. She is also the author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity (2015), a study of the effects of job precariousness on intimate life, and the editor of Beyond the Cubicle: Job Insecurity, Intimacy and the Flexible Self (2016). Her first book, Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture (2009), won multiple best book awards and was widely reviewed.
Pugh’s research and teaching focus on how people forge connections and find meaning and dignity at home and at work, and how economic trends – from job insecurity to commodification to automation – can make that harder. The 2024-5 Vice President of the American Sociological Association, Pugh has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Berggruen Institute, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a visiting scholar in Germany, France and Australia. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New Republic and other outlets.
Pugh grew up in New York City and attended public schools there. She lived for 12 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she co-founded a K-8 charter school.
Pugh’s research and teaching focus on how people forge connections and find meaning and dignity at home and at work, and how economic trends – from job insecurity to commodification to automation – can make that harder. The 2024-5 Vice President of the American Sociological Association, Pugh has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Berggruen Institute, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a visiting scholar in Germany, France and Australia. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New Republic and other outlets.
Pugh grew up in New York City and attended public schools there. She lived for 12 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she co-founded a K-8 charter school.