The Gist

I am a Sociology Ph.D. Candidate in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, studying how organizations’ adoption of new technologies reshapes retail work. I have extensive experience with qualitative research methods and am deeply committed to the ethnographic tradition.

I spent the first half of my twenties in the physical sciences realm working as an environmental engineer. Formerly a young woman pushed into a career in STEM, my teaching philosophy is one of helping people understand how to think critically about the society around them. Regardless of one’s interests, my teaching practices are rooted in equipping students with a toolkit that allows them to view the workings of the world through a sociological lens. In doing so, students are allowed a greater sense of control over their often unpredictable and precarious futures.

contact: klmott@syr.edu

profile on google scholar

Research Interests

Work and labor, technology, urban poverty, social theory, ethnography and qualitative methods, housing, welfare policy, food studies, social movements