Dale Dannefer’s scholarly work is concerned with the links between social dynamics and life course processes. A pioneer in developing cumulative advantage theory as an explanatory life-course framework, he has published more than 90 articles, monographs and chapters in sociology, psychology, human development, education and gerontology. Dannefer’s current scholarship focuses on the effects of globalization on life course patterns and the problem of age segregation. He has just completed a large-scale empirical study of “culture change” in long-term care settings.
He teaches courses on life course and human development, the sociology of work and education, and social theory. Dannefer has been a research fellow in the Social Control program at Yale University, at the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California, and at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education in Berlin.