Michelle Byng, an associate professor of sociology, completed her doctorial research at the University of Virginia. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her substantive area of study is race and ethnic relations. Her primary foci are racism, stratification, and identity construction.

She has published a number of articles that examine experiences of discrimination, gender identity, and gender inequality among African American Muslim women. In connection with her current project on immigrant and second generation Muslim Americans, she has written a series of manuscripts that investigate their representation in newspaper articles before and after September 11, 2001. Her article “Complex Inequalities: The Case of Muslim Americans After 9/11” is forthcoming in American Behavioral Scientist.

Dr. Byng’s current research project is titled: Muslim Americans and the Social Construction of Identity: Negotiating Nationality, Ethnicity, and Race.  Using qualitative methods, interviewing, ethnography, and content analysis, this study seeks to reveal how first and second generation Muslim American men and women construct and negotiate identity options.  It examines their understanding of their lives in the United States, their perception of “home” (their country of origin), as well as how they place themselves in the larger context of US race relations and stratification.

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