Evan T. Baughman

Education

• M.A., Sociology, UC Davis, 2021
• B.A., Religion and Sociology, Bowdoin College, 2017

About

Evan studies the intersections of medicine, disability, and higher education. His three-paper dissertation addresses these themes through analyses of disability sport, i.e. sport contested by disabled people. Disability sport demonstrates how disability is enacted transgressively, highlights its socially constructed nature, and reveals central tensions between disability and medicine. Two papers examine disability sport at the international level through historical analysis of the Paralympic Games, while the third investigates disability sport at the intercollegiate level through interviews with student-athletes. Through these analyses, Evan's dissertation interrogates the (de)medicalization of disability, how disabled people transform medical institutions and organizations, accessibility, disabled cultural identity, and community formation.

Research Focus

Medical Sociology, Disability, Institutional Work, Social Movements, Education, Theory, Qualitative Methods

Publications

• Baughman, Evan. 2025. “Competing Models of Disability: Medicalization’s Ambivalent Effects on the Paralympic Movement.” Socius 11. doi.org/10.1177/23780231251351705
  • Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award – American Sociological Association Section on Disability in Society
  • Leon Mayhew Prize for Best Qualifying Paper – UC Davis Sociology

Under Review

• Baughman, Evan. 2025. "Championing Demedicalization: How Paralympic Disability Sport Transcended Medical Origins"

Current Projects

• "Education Experiences of Intercollegiate Wheelchair Basketball Student-Athletes"
• “Bachelor’s Degree Attainment by Disability Type”
• "Transitions to Adulthood Among Disabled Native and Foreign-Born Adults"
• "ADHD as Contested Illness: Media Critiques of Medicalization and Pharmaceuticalization"

Teaching

Associate Instructor:

• SOC 146: Sociology of Religion

Teaching Assistant:

• SOC 001: Introduction to Sociology
• SOC 100: Origins of Modern Sociological Theory
• SOC 122: Sociology of Adolescence
• SOC 124: Education and Inequality
• SOC 162: Culture, Society, and Health
• SOC 164: Health Policy
• SOC 185: Social Policy

Awards

• 2025 - Dean’s Summer Graduate Support Award – UC Davis College of Letters and Science
• 2024 - Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award – American Sociological Association Section on Disability in Society
• 2024 - Dissertation Year Fellowship - UC Davis Graduate Studies
• 2024 - Emerging Scholar Award - Sport & Society Research Network
• 2024 - Leon Mayhew Prize for Best Qualifying Paper - UC Davis Sociology
• 2024 - Travel Grant - UC Davis Sociology
• 2024 - Small Research Grant - UC Davis Sociology
• 2022 - Graduate Student Association Travel Award - UC Davis Graduate Studies
• 2019 - Dean’s Distinguished Graduate Fellowship - UC Davis
• 2017 - Lydia Bell Award for Initiative in Public Service - Bowdoin College
• 2016 - Grua/O’Connell Research Award - Bowdoin College