Dr. Rachel Skaggs

Areas of Expertise

• Creative industries
• Cultural sociology
• Sociology of organizations, occupations, and work
• Mixed methods (qualitative, quantitative, and social network analysis)

Education

• PhD, Sociology. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
• MA, Sociology. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
• BA, Anthropology/Sociology. Centre College, Danville, KY

Dr. Rachel Skaggs is the Lawrence and Isabel Barnett Assistant Professor of Arts Management. Dr. Skaggs completed her PhD in sociology at Vanderbilt University where she was a fellow at the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy.

Dr. Skaggs’s research focuses on how workers in post-bureaucratic employment situations (freelance, project-based, self-employment, and other forms of free agency) are able to craft careers out of a series of self-directed projects and jobs, particularly in creative industries. She is especially interested in how workers in these situations collaborate and cooperate along the way. Her research has focused on topics such as the importance of social networks in music industry careers, arts entrepreneurship, how artists learn to deal with rejection and failure, and the public perceptions of artists in local communities. This work has been published in sociological and arts-focused venues such as Work and Occupations, Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, and Business Creativity and the Creative Economy.

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