Skip to main content

Hedwig Eugenie Lee

James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Sociology

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

View All News

Recent Publications


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

Vanishing twins, selection in utero, and infant mortality in the United States.

Journal Article Evolution, medicine, and public health · January 2025 Background and objectivesResearch to identify fetal predictors of infant mortality among singletons born in the United States (US) concludes that poorly understood and unmeasured "confounders" produce a spurious association between fetal size and ... Full text Cite

Barriers to neurosurgery for medical students: a national study focused on the intersectionality of gender and race.

Journal Article Journal of neurosurgery · November 2024 ObjectiveDespite 51.2% of medical school graduates being female, only 29.8% of neurosurgery residency applicants are female. Furthermore, only 12.6% of neurosurgery applicants identify as underrepresented in medicine (URM). Evaluating the entry ba ... Full text Cite
View All Publications

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

View All Grants

Education, Training & Certifications


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