Mary Still , Ph.D.

Bio—Mary Still

Mary Still holds a PhD in sociology from Cornell University, where she studied organizational theory and behavior, social networks, economic sociology and gender.   Dr. Still was a Sage Fellow for two years at Cornell University and received three years of additional fellowship support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In her doctoral research, she compared the diffusion of a technological innovation, the Internet, with an administrative innovation, flexible scheduling, amongst the Fortune 100 from 1985 to 2001. Her research showed that the increasing porousness of organizations via interfirm hiring and networks led to rapid adoption of the Internet, but not flexible scheduling.

Still came to GW in the fall of 2008 from a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University’s Institute for the Social Sciences, where she worked with computer scientists, information scientists, economists and management scholars to produce maps of corporate “social structure,” or linkages between firms based on the hiring of senior managers.

While completing her dissertation, Still led the research efforts of the Center for WorkLife Law, then based at American University Washington College of Law. At WLL, she collaborated with legal scholars, practicing attorneys and law students in the center’s efforts to document lawsuits against companies in which family caregiver discrimination was involved.  Her work there has been featured in numerous national media outlets, including The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/jobs/30wcol.html), and she has served as an expert witness on maternal wall profiling in organizations.

Before returning to graduate school, Dr. Still worked in the south as a newspaper reporter.  She won investigative reporting awards for her work exposing oil and gas polluters in the state of Virginia, as well as government abuse of eminent domain in areas surrounding the Shenandoah National Park.  A story for The Charlotte Observer, where she worked as a special correspondent, inspired her to go back to graduate school and study race and economic exclusion in the rural south.

Still received her undergraduate degree in English from the University of Virginia and a Masters in sociology from the University of South Carolina. She is published in such journals as Social Theory, Social Forces, Administrative Science Quarterly (forthcoming), Managerial and Decision Economics, and Industrial and Corporate Change, and has taught courses on organizational theory, sociology, social networks, and women and politics.
In her spare time, Still travels, competes in occasional triathlons and road races, sea kayaks, and adopts new fitness fads. She lives on Lake Audubon in Reston, VA.

Mary Still
Assistant Professor
Organizational Science Department
Columbian School of Arts and Sciences
George Washington University
600 21st Street NW
Suite 104
Washington D.C. 20012