Leah Ruppanner

Leah Ruppanner is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Melbourne's School of Social and Political Sciences in the Faculty of Arts. She is the Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab and the Gender Equity Initiative. Ruppanner holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Irvine in 2009, an MA in Demographic and Social Analysis from the same university in 2006, and a BA in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2003. Her professional trajectory includes Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa from 2009 to 2012, Research Assistant Professor at the Survey Research and Methodology Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 2012 to 2013, and progressive roles at the University of Melbourne since 2013: Lecturer (2013-2014), Senior Lecturer (2015-2018), Associate Professor (2019-2021), and Professor since 2022. She co-directed The Policy Lab from 2018 to 2021.

Ruppanner's research investigates gender and its intersections with inequalities, technologies, and policies, particularly unpaid cognitive and emotional labor (mental load), housework, childcare, sleep, well-being, and women's employment trajectories, including during COVID-19. She authored the book Motherlands: How States Push Mothers Out of Employment (Temple University Press, 2020). Select peer-reviewed publications include “School Reopenings During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Implications for Gender and Racial Equity” (Demography, 2022, with Landivar, Scarborough, Collins et al.), “The mental load: building a deeper theoretical understanding of how cognitive and emotional labor overload women and mothers” (Community, Work & Family, 2022, with Dean and Churchill), and “How do Gender Norms and Childcare Costs Affect Maternal Employment Across US States” (Gender & Society, 2021, with Collins, Landivar, and Scarborough). Her research has garnered significant funding, such as the ARC Future Fellowship for “The Consequences of the Mental Load for Australian families” (2023-2026, $1.18 million), ARC DECRA for “Family Well-Being: The Role of Public Policy” (2015, $372,000), ARC Discovery for “Enhancing Sleep and Well-Being in Working Families” (2018-2021, $242,944), and others. Publications appear in premier outlets like Demography, Journal of Marriage and Family, European Sociological Review, and Social Science Research. Ruppanner enjoys extensive media engagement in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, and hosts the MissPerceived podcast.

Professional Email: leah.ruppanner@unimelb.edu.au