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Hedwig Eugenie Lee

James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Sociology
PO Box 90088, Durham, NC 27710-0088
2200 West Main Street, Suite 700, Durham, NC 27705

Current Appointments & Affiliations


James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Sociology · 2023 - Present Sociology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Professor of Sociology · 2022 - Present Sociology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

In the News


Published August 5, 2024
Search Committee Named for Next Social Science Research Institute Director
Published July 11, 2024
Changing the Demography of the Scholars Who Study Demography
Published April 15, 2024
Today’s Faculty Reflect on a Century of Scholars

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Recent Publications


Conceptualizing and Measuring Systemic Racism.

Journal Article Annual review of public health · April 2025 This article provides a guide for rigorous, theory-driven measurement approaches, proposing best practices for the scientific study of systemic racism in health research. We argue that the analytical crux of measuring systemic racism-a complex, interconnec ... Full text Cite

Left Truncation in the Periviable Period and the Black Survival Advantage.

Journal Article Paediatric and perinatal epidemiology · April 2025 BackgroundInfants born in the periviable period show an extremely high risk of infant death. At all gestational ages in the periviable period, non-Hispanic (NH) Black infants counterintuitively show relatively lower infant mortality risk than do N ... Full text Cite

A national data set of historical US sundown towns for quantitative analysis.

Journal Article Scientific data · January 2025 We present a new national data set of historical sundown towns in the United States linked to contemporary spatial information - i.e., the Historical Sundown Towns Linked to US Census Geographies database. Sundown towns are places that once enacted legal o ... Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


The Health Consequences of Childhood Maltreatment and Foster Care From Adolescence Into Mid-Life

ResearchCo Investigator · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2025 - 2027

Health disparity of survival advantage: the case of non-Hispanic black preterm births

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by University of California - Irvine · 2022 - 2026

DNA methylation in context: Racial inequities in social adversity and vulnerability to the health impact of air pollution

ResearchCo Investigator · Awarded by Regents of the University of Michigan · 2021 - 2026

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Education, Training & Certifications


University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill · 2009 Ph.D.