Karolyn Tyson

Georgetown University

Professor and Chair

Karolyn Tyson is Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of Integration Interrupted, winner of the 2011 Bourdieu Best Book Award from the Sociology of Education section of the American Sociological Association. She has served as chair of the ASA Sociology of Education section and co-director of the UNC's Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (MURAP). She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and at the Russell Sage Foundation. Tyson's program of research centers on understanding racial inequality in educational outcomes and how race matters in educational experiences, particularly for black students. She uses qualitative research methods to study the critical role of institutions and the ways in which people make sense of and respond to their environments. By investigating the interplay between institutions and actors, her research has revealed important mechanisms driving racial disparities. Tyson has a B.A. in sociology from Spelman College and a MA and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.