Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Assistant Professor of Sociology

Email: vaisey@soc.duke.edu

Postal address:
Box 90088
Durham, NC 27708-0088

Stephen Vaisey is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Senior Fellow in the Kenan Institute for Ethics. He is currently on leave from the University of California, Berkeley, where he is Assistant Professor of Sociology. His research focuses on where people get their ideas about what a “good life” looks like and what it means to be a “good person” and to determine how that shapes the choices they make. He has also conducted research on 1970s communes, religion and marijuana use, educational overqualification, gene-environment interactions, and the relationship between poverty and educational aspirations, among other topics. Most generally, he examines why people do the things they do, and figures out the role of culture and cognition in explaining human behavior. He earned a BA in French and a BS in Sociology from Brigham Young University and an MA and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.