Laura A. Sanchez, Ph.D.

Laura Sanchez is a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University. She earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she was also a demography trainee at the Center for Demography and Ecology (CDE). Prior to joining the faculty at BGSU in 2001, she was on the faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Tulane University. Along with her faculty responsibilities, she has also served as the director of the Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR, UNL) and 5 years as the director of the Center for Family and Demographic Research (CFDR, BGSU).

Following a significant record of work-family and gender-division-of-labor research, her most recent work has two streams. First, she studies human-animal interaction through the lens of horse-human relationships. She explores how parents and children and young adults interpret the values and relationship and life skills young people acquire through their horse relationships and sport activities. She also examines older equestrian women’s changing sense of identity as they manage shifting horse relationships and mental and physical competencies as they age. Second, she studies the scholarship of teaching and learning with a focus on faculty empathy, burnout, and best practices. A current vein of this latter work addresses faculty responses to state and federal challenges to academic freedom and diversity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB).

She has served as a guest editor of the Journal of Marriage and Families, and as a member of editorial boards of Teaching Sociology, Gender & Society, Journal of Family Issues, and Gender & Society. She has served on the American Sociological Association (ASA) Sex and Gender and Family Section Councils (2001-2005, 2010-2014) and as Secretary-Treasurer of the ASA Family Section (2006-2009). For the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR), she served as Chair of the Elections Council (2010-2014) and was also elected to the NCFR Fellows Committee (2015-2018).

Research Areas

• Family
• Gendered Identities
• Human-Animal Interaction
• Social Demography