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Angela Dixon

Angela Dixon

  • Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences
  • Assistant Professor of Law, Pritzker School of Law

Contact

angela.dixon@northwestern.edu

Academic Area

Learning Sciences

Research Interests

Health Disparities, Bereavement, Mortality, Stratification and Inequality, Discrimination, Colorism

Biography

Angela Dixon is an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy, with a joint appointment in the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University. Her research investigates the lives of the bereaved after loss by examining the health and socioeconomic impacts of premature death on the loved ones left behind. In other work, she examines patterns of inequality, exploring how conceptualizations of race, ethnicity, skin color, and discrimination shape stratification across societies.

Dr. Dixon’s research has been supported by various funders, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH K01 Career Development Award), the Spencer Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the American Sociological Association. Before joining Northwestern, Dr. Dixon was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Emory University and a David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy with a concentration in Demography from Princeton University and her B.S. in Psychology with a second major in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Education

  • Ph.D., Sociology and Social Policy, Princeton University
  • BS, Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Awards and Honors

  • NIH National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award. Principal Investigator. “The Loved Ones Left Behind: Examining the Health Implications of Bereavement.” ($660,285), 2022-2027
  • Spencer Foundation, Racial Equity Special Research Grant. “The Bereavement Achievement Gap: Black-White Disparities in Mortality and Educational Attainment.” ($75,000), 2021
  • Russell Sage Foundation, Pipeline Grant. “A Deadly Inheritance: Intergenerational Impacts of Kinship and Household Mortality.” ($30,000), 2021
  • American Sociological Association, Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline ($8,000), 2020

Select Publications

Dixon, Angela R. "Empty chairs at the dinner table: Black-white disparities in exposure to household member deaths." SSM-Population Health 27 (2024): 101704.

Dixon, Angela R. "Colorism and classism confounded: Perceptions of discrimination in Latin America." Social science research 79 (2019): 32-55.

Dixon, Angela R., and Edward E. Telles. "Skin color and colorism: Global research, concepts, and measurement." Annual Review of Sociology 43.1 (2017): 405-424.