Phyllis Moen

Phyllis Moen (pronounced Mow-in), Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota and at Cornell University, is a McKnight Endowed Presidential Chair and was Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota.

Professor Moen studies the human meanings of social change in the form of innovations in paid work transforming (gendered) career and life course pathways. This includes the effects of both organizational and technological shifts and macro-level historical forces, such as the aging of the workforce and COVID-19, affected employees’ stress, well-being and health at all life stages.

With Wen Fan, Dr. Moen is currently investigating new ways of working, including the gendered effects of remote work. With both Fan and Juliet Schor, she is examining the effects of trials of a four-day, 32-hour workweek. With Erin Kelly (MIT) and the Work, Family and Health Network, she assessed the psychological and physical health effects of an organizational-level innovation aimed at increasing supervisor support and employee control over where and when they work. hTis resulted in an award-winning book, Kelly and Moen (2021).  Overload: How good jobs went bad and what we can do about it. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 

Other award-winning books include The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream (2005, with Patricia Roehling) and Encore Adulthood: Boomers on the Edge of Risk, Renewal, and Purpose (2016). 

Dr. Moen has served as President of the interdisciplinary and international Work and Family Researchers' Network (WFRN), President of the Eastern Sociological Society, and Director of the Life Course Center, an Interdisciplinary NIA-Funded Center on the Demography and Economics of Aging at the University of Minnesota.  She has received numerous awards, most recently the John Bynner Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies; the Lifetime Achievement 2020 Award from the Work and Family Research Network; and the Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health 2020, from the American Sociological Association’s Mental Health Section. 

A life course scholar, Professor Moen is interested in the time use and health effects of an aging population, longer working lives, and retirement in these times of remarkable social and technological change.