Email: skacord@ufl.edu
Dr. Sophia Krzys Acord has accepted the position of Associate Dean for Research and Strategic Initiatives in the UF College of the Arts.
A cultural sociologist by training, Sophia joined the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere team in 2010. For 11 years, she oversaw the Humanities Center’s daily operations, as well as its internal funding programs, annual speaker series, humanities fellowship- and grant-seeking support, and the Mellon Intersections project. Sophia co-founded the UF Digital Humanities Working Group, Imagining America Working Group, Impact of Materials on Society course project, and Humanities and the Sunshine State Summer Programs for high school students and educators, and she generally encourages scholars to cross academic boundaries for fruitful conversations!
Prior to UF, Sophia was a specialist researcher at the University of California, Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, where she managed the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Future of Scholarly Communication Project. She has also held research fellowships at the Yale University Center for Cultural Sociology and the École des Mines Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, and was a founding editor of the peer-reviewed open-access journal Music and Arts in Action. Her research examines the collaborative production of knowledge in the arts and humanities, and she has published work in cultural sociology, the sociology of the arts, higher education, mobile technologies, museum studies, and qualitative research methods.
Sophia holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Exeter (from which her dissertation on curating contemporary art received an Honorable Mention for the 2010 American Sociological Association’s Dissertation Award), an M.Res. from the University of Exeter, and a B.A. from Swarthmore College.
Courses Taught as a Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology & Law:
SYA 4110 – Development of Sociological Thought
SYA4930 – Sociology of the Arts