Daniel Cornfield, professor of sociology, has been named a 2013 fellow of the Labor and Employment Relations Association. The LERA Fellows Award recognizes labor scholars and professionals who have made contributions of unusual distinction to the field over the course of 10 years or more.
Cornfield specializes in the sociology of work, employment and labor organization.
The Labor and Employment Relations Association was founded in 1947 to bring together labor and employment relations professionals, experts and academics to share ideas and learn about new developments, issues and practices. “LERA convenes not only scholars but also practitioners from all sides of the bargaining table, including corporate managers, arbitrators, mediators and trade unionists,” Cornfield said. “In this sense, LERA is an unusually inclusive professional association in an interdisciplinary field of scholarship and practice that is often contentious, and a field that encourages shared decision making, rational and equitable terms of employment and work organization, and profitability through collective bargaining.”
“My LERA colleagues are among the social scientists I most admire,” he said, “and [rquote]I am honored to be named a fellow in a scholarly community that encourages creative, rigorous and policy-relevant research on themes that pertain to sustaining an inclusive, productive and democratic society.”[/rquote]
In 2009, LERA awarded Cornfield a Susan C. Eaton Scholar-Practitioner Grant to support Cornfield’s upcoming book on the careers of Nashville musicians, which was originally funded by Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy.
The fellowships will be presented on May 31, 2014, at the 66th LERA Annual Meeting in Portland, Ore. Economist David Card of the University of California at Berkeley and Janice Bellace of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania will also be honored.