Julia DiBenigno is an organizational ethnographer and field researcher. Professor DiBenigno’s scholarship seeks to advance our understanding of topics related to the sociology of work and occupations, collaboration between professional groups, diversity, and culture change in non-profit and government organizations. Her research has appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly and the Academy of Management Annals and has won multiple best paper and best dissertation awards.
In her work, Professor DiBenigno seeks to understand occupational and organizational dynamics that affect important outcomes, from whether a nurse ignores or answers a patient call for help in the night to whether a soldier suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) receives mental healthcare with the full support of his or her commander. She specializes in qualitative, ethnographic methodologies (e.g., observation and interviewing). Using these methods, Professor DiBenigno immerses herself in the social worlds of those she studies to develop novel theories by focusing on empirical puzzles discovered during fieldwork which existing organizational theory cannot explain.
She received her PhD and MS in Work and Organization Studies from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a consultant for Deloitte's Organization and Change practice and received a BA in psychology from Columbia College.