Bio

Marbella Hill is a sociologist of inequality, family, work, and the life course whose research examines how race, gender, and class shape people’s aspirations, identities, relationships, and decision-making. Across her work, she is particularly interested in how people understand and navigate major life-course transitions within unequal social and institutional contexts. Her published research has examined life-course aspirations and expectations, identities and goals, the social construction of mothering and grandmothering, and the provision of social support within families. Her work has been published in Gender & Society, Journal of Marriage and Family, Sociological Focus, and the American Journal of Public Health.

Hill’s book in progress examines upward mobility as a meaning-making experience among young Black professionals. Moving beyond approaches that conceptualize mobility primarily as movement between socioeconomic positions, the book investigates how the pursuit and experience of upward mobility shape identity, aspirations, and consequential decisions about work, relationships, and family formation. Her broader research contributes to the sociologies of social class and mobility, work, family, the life course, and culture.

Hill received a B.A. in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Rice University in 2016 and 2021, respectively. She subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. In Fall 2023, she joined the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University as an Assistant Professor of Sociology.