Megan Carroll

Megan Carroll (she/her) is a sociologist of LGBTQ+ Families with expertise in the sociology of gender, families, sexualities, and social movements. Her research projects include a mixed-methods, community engaged study of asexualities and an ethnographic and interview study of gay fatherhood. Before joining CSUSB in 2019, Professor Carroll earned a PhD in Sociology with a graduate certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Southern California. 

Professor Carroll's Asexual Intimacies project examines LGBTQ+ families from the perspective of asexual individuals who experience little to no sexual attraction to people of any gender. Survey data and interviews with a diverse pool of asexual individuals reveal how social systems are organized around compulsory sexuality and amatonormativity. Professor Carroll argues that asexual people's families/relationships can serve as models of new pathways for support and joy. 

In her research on gay fatherhood networks in California, Texas, and Utah, Professor Carroll examines how inequalities of race, place, and class are tied to gay fathers' pathways to parenthood, creating hierarchies between gay fathers who had children in heterosexual unions and those who had children via adoption or surrogacy, after coming out. She argues that the construction of a Normal Gay Father, fueled by the respectability politics of the marriage equality movement, left many vulnerable families' needs unmet, especially those who had children in heterosexual unions. 

Professor Carroll is currently serving a 3-year term as the Secretary/Treasurer for the American Sociological Association's Sexualities Section (2022-2025). She is also on the editorial board for the Journal of Marriage and Family and the Journal of Family Theory & Review. In 2020, Professor Carroll founded the Ace/Aro Scholar Support Network (AASSN), a mentorship organization to support collaboration among scholars of asexualities and aromanticism. Scholars of asexualities or aromanticism who wish to join the AASSN discord server are encouraged to reach out over email. 

Professor Carroll is the CSUSB chapter representative for Alpha Kappa Delta, the International Sociology Honor Society. Students interested in becoming members can access more information and fill out the online application via the sociology website. 

Recent Publications

Carroll, Megan. 2024. “What Does Asexuality Offer Sociology? Insights from the Asexual Community Survey.” Pp. 240-254 in Outskirts: Queer Experiences on the Fringe, edited by Amy Stone and D’Lane Compton. NYU Press.

Carroll, Megan. 2024. “Asexuality.” In The Sage Encyclopedia of LGBTQ+ Studies [Second Edition], edited by Abbie E. Goldberg. Sage Publications.

Randles, Jennifer and Megan Carroll. 2023. “Marginalize or Valorize: A Two-Case Study of Parental Essentialism and Fathers' Social Location.” Men and Masculinities 26(3): 335-355. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X231182623

Winer, Canton, Megan Carroll, Yuchen Yang, Katherine Linder, and Brittney Miles. 2022. "'I Didn't Know Ace Was a Thing': Bisexuality and Pansexuality as Identity Pathways in Asexual Identity Formation." Sexualities. Online First. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607221085485 

Goldberg, Abbie, Katherine Allen, and Megan Carroll. 2020. “’We Don’t Exactly Fit In, But We Can’t Opt Out’: Gay Dads’ Experiences Navigating School Parent Communities.” Journal of Marriage and Family 82(5): 1655-1676. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12695

Carroll, Megan. 2020. “Asexuality and Its Implications for LGBTQ-Parent Families.” Pp. 185-198 in LGBT-Parent Families: Innovations in Research and Implications for Practice [Second Edition], edited by Abbie E. Goldberg and Katherine R. Allen. New York: Springer.

Feel free to reach out over email to request a free copy of any publications.