Julia Adams

Areas of Interest

Comparative Historical Sociology; Social Theory; Political Sociology; Culture and Knowledge; Sex/Gender/Family; Early Modern European States and Empires

Academic Bio

Julia Adams teaches and conducts research in state-building; social theory and knowledge; family, sex and gender; early modern European politics, and colonialism and empire.  Her research focuses on four overlapping areas: (a) patrimonial politics in world history; (b) agency relations and transitions to modernity; (c) the university and American higher education, and (d) the representation of academic knowledge on Wikipedia and other digital platforms.

Adams is Margaret H. Marshall Professor of Sociology. She also chairs the European Studies Council and co-directs YaleCHESS (Center for Historical Enquiry and the Social Sciences(Link is external)), both at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International & Area Studies at Yale, and serves as trustee of her alma mater Reed College(Link is external).

Julia Adams’ book The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe(Link is external) won the Gaddis Smith Book Prize.  Listen to a related interview.(Link is external) With Mounira Maya Charrad, she co-edited Patrimonial Capitalism and Empire(Link is external) (Link opens in new window) and Patrimonial Power in the Modern World(Link is external) (Link opens in new window). With Elisabeth S. Clemens and Ann Shola Orloff, Adams co-edited Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology(Link is external) (Duke University Press, 2005). Her work in this vein has twice won the Barrington Moore Jr. Award for Best Article given by the ASA section in Comparative and Historical Sociology.

In 2008-9, Adams served as elected president of the Social Science History Association. Her presidential address, “1-800-How-Am-I-Driving? Agency in Social Science History,” can be found in Vol. 35 #1 (Spring 2011) of Social Science History(Link is external), pp. 1-17.

At Yale, Adams has chaired the Department of Sociology and the Council of Heads of College; directed the Division of the Social Sciences; the Fox International Fellowship Program, and the International Affairs Council and European Studies Councils at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. She served in the Provost’s Office in 2013-14. For a decade (2014-24), Adams served as the last Master of Calhoun College and the first Head of Grace Hopper College(Link is external). 

In academic year 2025-6, Adams co-chaired (with Beverly Gage) the faculty-led Committee on Trust in Higher Education, convened by Yale President Maurie McInnis in April 2025. The committee’s report can be found here: https://president.yale.edu/posts/2026-04-15-report-of-the-committee-on-trust-in-higher-education

Adams received a National Science Foundation grant for collaborative research with Hannah Bruckner on “Wikipedia and the Democratization of Academic Knowledge” and continues to explore affiliated topics in her research and teaching.

Selected Wikipedia Research Project Links

• “Wikipedia and the Democratization of Academic Knowledge(Link is external)” is an NSF-funded study of how academics and academic subjects are represented on Wikipedia. The ongoing work is directed by Professors Julia Adams of Yale University and Hannah Brückner (Professor Emerita, NYU Abu Dhabi).  
• Adams, Julia (2016) Can crowdsourcing capture academic knowledge? The Wikipedia experiment(Link is external) (Link opens in new window), Parameters/SSRC, October 2016.

Recent Publications

Books and Volumes

• Julia Adams and Mounira Maya Charrad (2015). Patrimonial Capitalism and Empire(Link is external) (Link opens in new window). (Book Series: Political Power and Social Theory). Emerald Publishing.
• Julia Adams and Mounira Maya Charrad (2011). Patrimonial Power in the Modern World.(Link is external) (The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Julia Adams (2005). The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe.(Link is external) Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff (2005). Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology.(Link is external) Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Selected Articles

• Isaac Ariail Reed and Julia Adams. 2024. “Patriarchal Patrimonialism: Authority, Gender, and Max Weber’s Political Sociology,” in Joshua Derman and Peter E. Gordon, eds. Max Weber at 100. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press).
• Julia Adams. 2020. “Patriarchy Resartus,” in Julia Adams, Benita Roth, and Pavla Miller, “Debating Patriarchy,” Lilith: A Feminist History Journal 26: 221-38.
• Julia Adams and Isaac Reed. 2020. “Coda: Crossing Companies, Theories of Agency, and Early Modern European Empire,”(Link is external) Journal of World History 31 #3 (September), 477-97.
• Julia Adams, Hannah Brueckner, and Cambria Naslund (2019). “Who Counts as a Notable Sociologist on Wikipedia? Gender, Race, and the “Professor Test.”(Link is external) Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, Volume 5: pp. 1-14.
• Wei Luo, Julia Adams, and Hannah Brueckner (2018). “The Ladies Vanish? American Sociology and the Genealogy of its Missing Women on Wikipedia,”(Link downloads file) Comparative Sociology.  Vol. 17 #5, pp. 519-556. 
• Julia Adams and Steve Pincus. 2017. “Imperial States in the Age of Discovery,”(Link downloads file) pp. 333-48 in The Many Hands of the State: Theorizing Political Authority and Social Control(Link is external) (eds. Kimberly J. Morgan and Ann Shola Orloff). New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Julia Adams and Ben Herzog. 2017. “Women, Gender, and the Revocation of Citizenship in the United States,(Link is external)” Sage Journals, August 25, 2017.
• Julia Adams and Hannah Brückner. 2015. “Wikipedia, sociology, and the promise and pitfalls of Big Data(Link downloads file) (Link opens in new window),” Big Data and Society, July-December 2015: 1-5.
• Julia Adams and Chris Shughrue. 2015. “Bottlenecks and East Indies Companies: Modeling the Geography of Agency in Mercantilist Enterprises(Link is external) (Link opens in new window),” in Emily Erikson (ed.) Chartering Capitalism: Organizing Markets, States, and Publics (Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 29) Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 207 - 218.
• Julia Adams and George Steinmetz. 2015. “Sovereignty and Sociology: From State Theory to Theories of Empire”. (Book Series: Political Power and Social Theory). Emerald Publishing.
• Julia Adams and Liping Wang. 2011. “Interlocking Patrimonialisms and State Formation in Qing China and Early Modern Europe,” in J. Adams and M. M. Charrad, Special Editors. Patrimonial Power in the Modern World,(Link is external) (Link opens in new window) The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 636 (July): Washington, DC: Sage. 
• Julia Adams. 2011. “1-800-How-Am-I-Driving? Agency in Social Science History,” Social Science History(Link is external), vol. 35 #1, pp. 1-17
• Julia Adams and Isaac Ariail Reed. 2011. “Culture in the Transitions to Modernity: Seven Pillars of a New Research Agenda,” Theory & Society, Volume 40, Issue 3, pp 247-272.
• Julia Adams and David Weakliem. 2011. “What Do We Mean by “Class Politics”?” Politics & Society Volume 39 Issue 4 December 2011 pp. 475 - 496.
• Julia Adams. 2010. “The Unknown James Coleman: Culture and History in Foundations of Social Theory(Link is external),” pp 237-294 in Contemporary Sociology, Vol 39, #3, 253-8, 2010.
• Julia Adams. 2008. “Scholarly Controversy: The Familial State,(Link is external) (Link opens in new window)” pp 237-294 in Political Power and Social Theory, Vol 19, 2008.
• Julia Adams and Ann Shola Orloff. 2005. “Defending Modernity? High Politics, Feminist Anti-Modernism and the Place of Gender(Link is external),” in Politics and Gender, 1 (1).
• Julia Adams. 2005. “The Rule of the Father: Patriarchy and Patrimonialism in Early Modern Europe,” pp. 237-266 in C. Camic, P. S. Gorski and D. M. Trubek (eds.), Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companion. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Julia Adams and Tasleem Padamsee. 2001. “Signs and Regimes: Rereading Feminist Work on Welfare States,” Social Politics, 8 (1): 1-23.
• Julia Adams. 1999. “Culture in Rational-Choice Theories of State Formation,” pp. 98-122 in G. Steinmetz (ed.), State/Culture: State Formation After the Cultural Turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Julia Adams. 1996. “Principals and Agents, Colonialists and Company Men: The Decay of Colonial Control in the Dutch East Indies” American Sociological Review, 61 (1): 12-28.
• Julia Adams and Sara McLanahan. 1987. “Parenthood and Psychological Wellbeing,” Annual Review of Sociology13(Link is external), eds. R. Turner and J. Short. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews: 237-57.

Series Editor

• Politics, History and Culture Series(Link is external) (published by Duke University Press): Julia Adams and George Steinmetz, co-editors.

Selected Courses and Seminars

Undergraduate

• The Sociological Imagination
• Foundations of Social Theory
• Methods of Inquiry
• History, Sociology, and Grand Narratives
• Revolutions
• Empires and Imperialism
• Political Sociology

Graduate

• Sociological Theory
• Political Sociology
• Agency and Action
• Comparative and Historical Methods
• Revolutions in Comparative Perspective
• Comparative Research Workshop
• Early Modern Empires: Theory and History