Research interests: Gender, Identity, Research methods, Inclusion and belonging in higher education

Dr. Fairchild is Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies. She was previously Associate Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at New College of Florida. Her current research focuses on inclusion in higher education, drawing on a qualitative study of an especially gender-diverse student population at a small liberal arts college. With a dominant shared understanding that gender is nonbinary, fluid, and not necessarily connected to sex assigned at birth, students’ interactional norms hold one another accountable to gender inclusion, a striking difference from patterns observed on other campuses (this analysis is available in Advances in Trans Studies). Dr. Fairchild is currently writing about the implications of these findings for how scholars conceptualize the role of gender assumptions in interactional processes. Additionally, she explores the divergence of student and institutional culture in an essay forthcoming in Queerness as Doing in Higher Education.

She has also studied the relationships among gender at the cultural and interactional levels via analysis of wedding rituals (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography), gender representation in children’s books (Gender & Society), and athletes' gender presentations while competing (Sportswomen’s Apparel in the United States).

Dr. Fairchild did her undergraduate work in Sociology, Psychology, and Philosophy at Purdue University and earned her MA and PhD in Sociology at Indiana University. At the graduate level, she teaches SOC 3305: Teaching Practicum and, at the undergraduate level, SOC 1128: Models of Social Science Research.