In recognition of her contributions to the field of aging studies, Jennifer Karas Montez, assistant professor of sociology, has been named the Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar in Aging Studies for the academic years 2016-17 through 2018-19. The appointment comes with an annual stipend for research support in aging studies. It is made possible by the generous contributions of Gerald B. Cramer ’52, a Syracuse University Trustee Emeritus, member of the Maxwell School Advisory Board and a longstanding supporter of Syracuse University’s Aging Studies Institute.
 
Janet Wilmoth, director of the Aging Studies Institute, noted, “We appreciate Gerry Cramer’s support of Jennifer Karas Montez’s outstanding scholarship on the social determinants of health and mortality trends.”

Karas Montez’s research examines the large and growing inequalities in adult mortality across education levels and geographic areas within the United States. She is particularly interested in why the growing inequalities have been most troublesome among women. Her current work blends perspectives from social demography and feminist geography to investigate the role of states in shaping women’s and men’s mortality in unique ways. She also studies whether and why experiences in childhood, such as poverty and abuse, have enduring consequences for health during later life.

Her work was recently featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and BBC World Service.

Karas Montez received her PhD in sociology with a demography specialization at the University of Texas at Austin in 2011. After spending two years at the Harvard School of Public Health as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar, she was an assistant professor of sociology at Case Western Reserve University prior to arriving at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.