Liz Felix

Liz Felix is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department with research and teaching interests in the areas of the sociology of mental health, medical sociology, social networks, and crime, law, and deviance. Her work centers on status and stigma processes—the devaluation and social exclusion of individuals with a particular identity or label, such as mental illness. She examines how micro-level (e.g., social interactions with stigmatized others) and macro-level (e.g., media portrayals of violence) processes can shape the persistence of mental health-related beliefs, as well as how stigma and status processes (e.g., gender, sexual minority status) intersect to inform discriminatory experiences. In doing so, she studies both those who enact mental health stigma and those who experience devaluation and social exclusion, with a particular interest in the social ties of stigmatized others, such as family members. Her published work has appeared in such journals as Society and Mental Health, Social Science and Medicine, and Journal of Health and Social Behavior.