Research
Researcher Highlight
May 2012's Researcher of the Month: Dr. Robert Boyd, Associate Professor of Sociology
Robert L. Boyd, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and teaches courses in introductory sociology, racial minorities, and urban sociology.
Currently, he is pursing several lines of research, all of which apply sociological and historical perspectives to the analysis of Census data on racial and ethnic groups in the United States during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.
Two lines of research focus on the consequences of the migration and urbanization of the Black population during this time. The first explores how, within the context of racial segregation, residents of urban Black communities became employed in professions, entrepreneurial endeavors, public service occupations, and a wide range of artistic, entertainment and mass-media pursuits. A recent publication in this area is, “The ‘Black Metropolis’ Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of Northern and Southern Cities in the United States in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Urban Studies (March 2012).
A second line of research investigates competition among racial and ethnic groups, addressing the question of whether or not Black entrepreneurs in cities were displaced from retail proprietorships by competition from European immigrant entrepreneurs. A recent publication in this area is, “The Suppression Hypothesis Reconsidered: Competition Between Blacks and White Immigrants in the Retail Trade in Northern Cities, 1910-1930,” in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (January 2012).
A third line of research examines how immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, such as the Jewish immigrants from Russia, became shopkeepers in remote regions of the American South and West, presumably to serve consumer markets that were neglected by entrepreneurs from other ethnic groups. A recent publication in this area is, “Beyond Urban Economies: Retail Enterprise among Immigrant Groups in the Hinterlands of the United States in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Regional Studies (in press; available on-line).
His earlier research, on the socioeconomic and regional origins of eminent Black entrepreneurs, was published in Social Science Quarterly (2006), Journal of Socio-Economics (2008), and Southeastern Geographer (2009), among other journals.
He serves on the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed journals, including Sociological Focus, The Social Science Journal, and American Sociological Review, which is widely considered to be the flagship journal of the discipline.
He received the Clinton Wallace Dean’s Eminent Scholar Award from the College of Arts and Sciences in 2010-2011. He will become a full professor in the fall of 2012.