About

Corey M. Abramson* is currently an associate professor of sociology at Rice University. 

Professor Abramson’s research examines the connections between inequality, health, and culture over the life course. His scholarly publications on this topic have used a variety of empirical methods including participant observation in urban communities and clinics, analyses of national surveys, in-depth interviews with people facing terminal disease, analyses of text employing artificial intelligence (AI) alongside qualitative data analysis (QDA) techniques, and team based mixed-method approaches. These works have consistently received funding, including support from several of the National Institutes of Health. 

Professor Abramson is the author of The End Game: How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years (Harvard University Press), an award-wining ethnography on later life. The End Game was featured in national media outlets including The New York Times and The Atlantic, translated into Korean, and received positive reviews in the U.S. and abroad.   Professor Abramson co-edited Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography (Oxford University Press, with Neil Gong), a methodological volume charting how comparative field methods contribute to social science and evidence-based policies. His current book project (Oxford University Press, under contract) examines how social inequities and health are intertwined, and why this relationship is central to social stratification in America. 

Past and present works in methodology focus on (1) developing approaches that leverage computational social science (CSS) techniques alongside participant observation and in-depth interviews to improve the depth, scalability, transparency, and replicability of multi-site projects; and (2) theorizing the value and limits of methodological pluralism. Resulting papers include collaborations with younger scholars in his lab and interdisciplinary teams, appearing in venues such as Sociological Methodology,  Socius, Health Affairs, Ethnography, and BMJ Open, among others.  Professor Abramson regularly shares his methodological and substantive expertise with students, colleagues, professional organizations, policy audiences, and institutions ranging from safety-net hospitals to international scientific consortia.  Prior to becoming faculty, he earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. He also completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. Before moving to Rice, Professor Abramson was tenured as an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona.   

Personal

Before becoming a sociology professor, Corey grew up in an impoverished Los Angeles exurb, attended LA public schools, played at the Whisky-a-go-go with his garage-band, and was a first-generation college student at Berkeley who earned money over summers working in scrap metal with his father. After graduating from Cal, Corey earned a black belt in judo, taught English in Korea,  and lived on an old sailboat in Emeryville, CA. As an ethnographer Corey  spent years in cage-fighting gyms, nursing homes, neighborhoods, cancer clinics and housing projects learning about people. Corey deeply values opportunities to learn new things, enjoys getting DOS to run on contemporary electronic devices, enjoys creatives outlets (photography, writing, music) and spending time with  family. Corey enjoys humor, and finds the convention of writing biographies in the third person  awkward.

*Corey uses he/him pronouns