Our third event in this year's 2013-2014 NSSR Sociology Lecture Series is a talk by Sarah Babb, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, entitled: "Risky Business: IRBs and the Bureaucratic Regulation of Social Research."

In her talk, Dr. Babb looks at Institutional Review Board (IRB) review of research as an instance of the bureaucratic regulation of expert work. Such regulation generates uncertainty, since it puts decision-makers who may have little knowledge about specialized work in charge of deciding what workers can and cannot do. Based on a qualitative analysis of a survey of sociology chairs in the Northeast and 29 interviews at eight academic institutions, Babb argues that IRB regulation of non-experimental social research is particularly prone to generating uncertainty, and that this leads to common problems.

Dr. Babb is the author of Managing Mexico: Economists from Nationalism to Neoliberalism and coauthor ofEconomy/Society: Markets, Meanings, and Social Structure. Her most recent book is Behind the Development Banks: Washington Politics, World Poverty, and the Wealth of Nations.