William C. Cockerham

William C. Cockerham is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Chair Emeritus at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. In addition, he is the 2026 recipient of the Reeder Award for Distinguished Contribution to Medical Sociology from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Medical Sociology and a past president of the Research Committee on Health Sociology of the International Sociological Association. Various books he has authored on the social aspects of health and disease are translated into Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Persian, Spanish, and Turkish.

Recent books include Sociological Theories of Health and Illness (Routledge, 2021); The COVID-19 Reader: The Science and What It Says About the Social (co-edited with Geoffrey Cockerham, Routledge, 2021); the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology (edited, Wiley Blackwell, 2021), Sociology of Mental Disorder, 12th ed. (Routledge, 2024), Medical Sociology, 16th ed. (Routledge, 2025), Medical Sociology on the Move, Revised Edition including New Directions in Theory, 2nd edition (edited, Springer Nature 2025); The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society, 2nd edition (co-edited with Jonathan Gabe, J. Michael Ryan, and Stella Quah, Wiley Blackwell, 2026); and the Social Causes of Health and Disease, 4th ed. (Polity, 2026).