Omar Lizardo (born 7 September 1974) is an American sociologist who is LeRoy Neiman Term Chair Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was previously professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame (2006–2018), and co-editor of the American Sociological Review.
The website Academic Influence ranks Lizardo as the most influential sociologist from the period 2010–2020.
Biography
Lizardo was born in New York City, but spent most of his childhood and teenage years in La Romana, Dominican Republic.
He graduated from
Brooklyn College,
CUNY with a B.S. in
Psychology in 1997. He received a MA in 2002 and
PhD in 2006 from the University of Arizona both in sociology.
He completed his dissertation under the supervision of
Ronald Breiger,
Kieran Healy, and Erin Leahey, titled
Globalization, World Culture And The Sociology Of Taste: Patterns Of Cultural Choice In Cross-National Perspective.
Lizardo also co-authored several articles with
Albert Bergesen while at Arizona.
In 2006, he started as an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame in
South Bend,
Indiana. While at Notre Dame, he was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2012, and to the rank of
full professor in 2016. In 2018, he moved to
Los Angeles, to occupy his current post at
UCLA.
Affiliations
During his time as a professor of sociology at Notre Dame, he was an External Member of the Centre for the Critical Study of Global Power and Politics at
Trent University.
He has also served as a faculty fellow at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and was also a faculty member of iCeNSA, the Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications at Notre Dame,
now renamed the Center for Network & Data Science.
Projects
Lizardo has been involved in various multidisciplinary data analysis and data collection projects, including the NSF-funded NetSense data-collection project
and the
NIH-funded NetHealth data-collection project.
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Writing
Lizardo has been involved in four major book projects. In 2019, with Elliot Weininger and
Annette Lareau, he co-edited the book
Ritual, Emotion, Violence: Studies on the Micro-Sociology of Randall Collins, published by
Routledge. The volume features contributions from a wide range of social scientists whose work has been inspired by or seeks to extend the theories of the sociologist
Randall Collins. Lizardo co-drafted the introduction to the volume with Weininger in which they summarized the intellectual development of Randall Collins's work.
In 2020 Lizardo was part of the multiauthor collective that resulted in the book
Measuring Culture, published by Columbia University Press. The book covers the history and state of the art of how sociologists think about measuring culture across a wide range of distinct methodological and theoretical traditions. The book has been well-received as a strong and likely influential contribution to the field.
In 2021, with Seth Abrutyn he co-edited the
Handbook of Classical Sociological Theory published by Springer. This is a collection of essays designed to update and re-orient the status of classical theory in contemporary sociology.
Most recently, he is co-authoring a book with Brandeis University sociologist
Michael Strand on the role of probabilism in Social Theory as it influenced the sociologies of Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu and how it can be recovered to prosecute social theory and social analysis more generally today. The book, tentatively titled "Orienting to Chance," is under contract at The University of Chicago Press and slated for publication in the summer of 2025.
Awards and recognitions
In 2005, as a graduate student at the University of Arizona he won two ASA section awards with co-author Jessica Collett. First, the best Graduate Student Paper Award from the section on the Sociology of Religion for their paper
Why biology is not (religious) destiny: a second look at gender differences in religiosity (a revised version of the paper was later published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion under a different title
[.]). The second was the Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the section on the Sociology of Emotions for their paper
Socioeconomic status and the experience of anger.
(a revised version of that paper was later published in the journal
Social Forces under a slightly different title
).
In 2008, he won the Clifford Geertz Prize for Best Article from the ASA's section on the Cultural Sociology for a paper entitled How cultural tastes shape social networks,[.] In this article, Lizardo confronts the "traditional network model" in which cultural taste formation and transmission is shaped and determined by social networks and instead asks "whether cultural tastes and practices themselves have an independent effect on social structure (conceived as patterns of network relations)." He concludes that "popular culture" is characterized by wide appeal and ease of incorporation and is therefore associated with more weak ties (e.g., used as bridges), while "highbrow culture" is more exclusive and serves to strengthen close ties (e.g., used as fences).
In 2013, Lizardo won the Lewis Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting, which is "intended to recognize a mid-career sociologist whose work holds great promise for setting the agenda in the field of sociology.”
In 2014, with co-author Robert Fishman, Lizardo won the Charles Tilly Best Article Award of the ASA's Section on Comparative and Historical Sociology for their paper How macro-historical change shapes cultural taste: Legacies of democratization in Spain and Portugal,
In 2015, along with co-author Jessica Collett, Lizardo received an honorable mention for the ASA's Section on Sociology of Emotions Recent Contribution Award for their paper Embarrassment and social organization: A multiple identities model, previously published in Social Forces
In 2017, along with co-author Michael Strand, Lizardo received an honorable mention for the ASA's Section on Theory Prize for Outstanding Article for their paper Beyond world images: Belief as embodied action in the world,
In 2018, Lizardo was elected chair of the ASA's section on the Sociology of Culture. In 2019, Lizardo was elected a member of the Sociological Research Association.
External links
