Linda M. Burton
Dean of the Social Sciences

Linda M. Burton was appointed dean of social sciences effective July 2014. She came to Duke in 2006 from Penn State where she was Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and Sociology and directed a research center on family diversity and context. Dr. Burton was named a James B. Duke Professor in 2007. She was previously director of the undergraduate honors program and director of undergraduate studies in the sociology department. Dr. Burton has more than a decade of administrative experience from leading two National Institute of Mental Health consortia and postdoctoral training programs, and a lengthy history of leading large-scale federally and private foundation funded ethnographic and mixed methods studies of poverty, family processes, and human development across the life course. Her work has been nationally recognized, most recently with a Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association, the Inaugural Wiley Alexis Walker Award for Outstanding Research in Family Science, and the Family Research Consortium IV Legacy Award. 

Dr. Burton serves on several editorial boards and was recently a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Child Maltreatment Research, Policy, and Practice for the Next Decade, Committee on the Science of Research on Families for the Institute of Medicine, the Advisory Board of the National Center for Marriage and Family Research, the Board of Directors for the Family Process Institute, and the Board of Directors for the Council on Contemporary Families. She has also completed terms as a member of the National Research Council’s Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Children, Youth, and Families, and several National Institutes of Health study sections. Dr. Burton holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from the University of Southern California, and a B.A. in gerontology. She is a Gerontological Society of America Fellow and an elected member of the Sociological Research Association.

Email: socscidean@duke.edu
Phone: (919) 668-2746
Fax: (919) 668-2729

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Duke University
102 Allen Building
Box 90029
Durham North Carolina 27708-0029