Liz Chiarello

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Liz Chiarello is an associate professor of sociology at Saint Louis University with a background in medical sociology, socio-legal studies, organizational theory, and social movements. She theorizes about the interplay between professional work and institutions in law and medicine by pursuing two major lines of inquiry: To what extent do legal, political, and organizational forces shape variation in professional behavior and decision making? How do changes in daily tasks wrought by new laws, technologies, and inter-professional relationships become routinized into institutional rules and logics, and how might these changes disrupt field relationships? Chiarello addresses these questions empirically by examining reproductive justice and opioid use.

Chiarello is spending her year at Radcliffe writing a book on the contemporary US opioid and pain crises. It examines how the fields of health care and criminal justice in three states address these shared social problems, how they work collaboratively and combatively, how they use shared surveillance technology in the form of prescription drug monitoring programs, and implications for patient care.

Chiarello’s research is supported by a National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award and has previously received support from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She has received multiple awards from the American Sociological Association, including a Distinguished Article Award and a Junior Scholar Award. Chiarello is committed to translational research, and her work has been featured in podcasts, op-eds, and policy reports. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Irvine.