Kristen Lavelle's research focuses on race, narrative, memory, and identity from race-critical frameworks. Her recent research analyzed original in-depth interviews with elderly white American southerners about their memories of the racial past, including the eras of Jim Crow segregation and civil rights. That work was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2014: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442232808.
Kristen is a co-founder of the UW-Whitewater Oral History Project on Race (2016- ), an ongoing study in which student interviewers collect narratives from current UW-W undergraduate students on their background, home communities, and experiences with college life and campus climate related to race & ethnicity.
Professor Lavelle has over ten years of teaching experience and has taught a variety of courses in introductory sociology and the social sciences, research methods, social stratification, and race & ethnicity. She frequently serves as a mentor for students' research projects and applications to graduate school.