Title: Racism, Embodiment, and Health: Reflections on Biosocial Health Inequities Research
By Bridget Goosby, Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin, and IPR Visiting Scholar, May 2026
Abstract: Over the past two decades, biosocial research has reshaped the study of racial health inequities by demonstrating how exposure to racism becomes embodied across the life course. A range of stressors emerges from structural and organizational inequities down to daily microsocial interactions, undermining the health of targeted populations. Our lab’s collaborative and interdisciplinary research has sought to examine the dynamic interactions among the brain, body, and social environment that shape the processes through which racism becomes biologically consequential. Bringing together perspectives from sociology and adjacent social science disciplines, along with neuroscience, immunology, and endocrinology, this talk reflects on our body of empirical scholarship and on efforts to develop an integrative theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between stress, embodiment, and health. This talk also considers broader questions regarding how we define health inequities, what it means for inequality to become embodied, and how interdisciplinary scholarship might contribute to understanding these processes within an increasingly uncertain social and political landscape.
About IPR’s Visiting Scholars Program
The program brings exceptional researchers to Northwestern for short residencies that foster collaboration and intellectual exchange with IPR faculty and students.
This event is part of the Fay Lomax Cook Spring 2026 Colloquium Series, where our researchers from around the University share their latest policy-relevant research.
Please note all colloquia this quarter will be held in-person only.
Madeleine Bagnall
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