Julia Wrigley

Julia Wrigley has been a leading member of The City University of New York academic community since 1991. In December 2018, she began her appointment as interim provost and senior vice president of The Graduate Center.
 
In earlier administrative roles, from 2014 to 2015, she served as CUNY’s interim executive vice chancellor and university provost. Prior to that, she served as associate university provost, and from 2005 to 2008, she was the acting associate provost and dean for academic affairs at The Graduate Center.
 
Most recently, as The Graduate Center’s interim dean for master’s programs, she helped establish seven new interdisciplinary master’s programs.
 
She is a professor in the sociology and urban education programs at The Graduate Center, and her work focuses on social class and inequality. In Class Politics and Public Schools she analyzes conflicts over the control of Chicago’s schools and how these were shaped by the changing fortunes of the city’s working class movements. Her book Other People’s Children explores how domestic workers and middle-class parents negotiate class differences in children’s care. Her publications include an analysis (with Joanna Dreby) of how differences in the organization of child care affect the rates of children’s injuries and fatalities and the types of accidents or violence children experience. Her articles have appeared in varied publications, including the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review.
 
She received a B.A. in sociology from the University of Michigan and her master’s and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She taught at UCLA before coming to The Graduate Center in 1991.

Select Publications:

• Other People's Children. New York: Basic Books, 1995.
• Class Politics and Public Schools: Chicago 1900-1950. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982.
• Editor, Education and Gender Equality. London: Falmer Press, 1992.
• “Is Racial Oppression Intrinsic to Domestic Work? The Experiences of Children's Caregivers in Contemporary America.” The Cultural Territories of Race: Black and White Boundaries. Ed. Michele Lamont. Chicago: University of Chicago Press and New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999. 97-123.
• “From Housewives to Activists: Working-Class Women and the Gendered Politics of the Boston Anti-Busing Movement.” No Middle Ground: Women and Radical Protest. Ed. Kathleen M. Blee. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 251-288.​