About Me
Kendall Riley is a NIA T32 Postdoctoral Scholar in the Center for Demography of Health and Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach in her scholarship, often using sociological, social epidemiological, and sociolegal theories to inform her research on how structural conditions—and the social contexts they produce—shape health. Her work often focuses on societal disinvestment, racism, institutions of social control as causes of health inequalities. Riley has used multiple methods in research, with a specific expertise in regression analyses, multilevel and cluster analyses, longitudinal analyses, and structural equation modeling. Her research has been published in Social Science and Medicine, Journal of Aging and Health, and the Journal of Crime and Justice.
Riley earned her PhD and MA in sociology from the University of Iowa. She also holds dual B.S. degrees in Human Biology and Psychology from Indiana University. Her research experiences and training highlight how racialized and gendered societal ideologies shape individual-level health and disease risk through social policy, exposure to environmental toxins, and risk for adverse experiences including incarcerations. These early experiences and graduate training were foundational to her current research that examines how biological processes, such as aging, are shaped by the social world.
Riley is dedicated to supporting students using pedagogical philosophies that reject ableism to help build a more equitable and inclusive discipline. She often tributes her career trajectory to her mentors, beginning in her undergraduate studies. These mentors solidified her commitment to helping students explore social phenomena from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Riley invested in spaces to support students and unveil the hidden curriculum during her time at the University of Iowa. She founded the Criminology Workshop to reveal the underlying expectations of academia and cultivate community. Riley was also one of the founding members of the university-wide Race Workshop at the University of Iowa. Additionally, Riley serves as a formal mentor for several doctoral and undergraduate students through various institutional mentorship programs.