Alexandria Vasquez

Alix's research examines how material resources—clothing, design objects, aesthetic presentation—become essential infrastructure for professional identity under precarious capitalism. She shows that workers invest intensively in what she calls 'performative capital'—the ability to signal professional belonging through consumption and taste—even as this capital's exchange value for actual professional outcomes declines. This creates new forms of exploitation and new collective identities. She studies this through ethnography of mismatched creative workers and experiments with clothing and embodiment. She also put this research into practice through Herderin, a regenerative fashion brand addressing systematic exclusion.

• Public sociology / engaged scholarship
• Material culture and consumption
• Fashion and society
• Identity and self

• Social theory
• Economic sociology
• Work and organizations
• Qualitative methods / ethnography

• Brandeis University, PhD in Sociology, 2019
• Virginia Commonwealth University, MS in Sociology, 2012
• The New School, BA in Liberal Arts, 2009

• Owner & Founder, Herderin (2018-Present)
• Part-time Faculty in Sociology, Mill College (2019-2020)
• Teaching Fellow in Sociology, Brandeis University (2012-2017)
• Research Assistant, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2013-2016)

• Vasquez, A. 2026. “How Organizations Fail by Hiring for Culture Fit: The Costs of Mismatched Labor.” In Review at Administrative Science Quarterly.
• Vasquez, A. and Alexandra Nugent. 2026. “Clothing The Self: Material Resources, Reflexive Identity Work, and the Social Dimensions of Everyday Dressing.” In Review at Symbolic Interaction.
• Vasquez, A. 2026. “The Decline of Performative Capital: From Identity Politics to Ecological Futures” In Review at Theory and Society.
• Conrad, P, J. Bandini and A. Vasquez. 2016. “Illness and the Internet: From Private to Public Experience.” Health (London). 20(1):22-32.
• Sharone, O., and A. Vasquez. 2015. “Sociology as a Strategy of Support for Long-Term Unemployed Workers.” The American Sociologist. (47)1.