Jenny Vermilya

Bio

Dr. Jenny Vermilya is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Colorado Denver.  Her last position was as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Services at the University of North Georgia.  Dr. Vermilya’s expertise and professional interests center on gender and professions, symbolic interactionism, qualitative methods, and animals and society.  She has co-authored an article in Gender & Society on the feminization of veterinary medicine and has written solo on horses as a “border species” in the journal Society & Animals.  Her guest blog on the horse slaughter controversy in the U.S. appeared in Psychology Today’s blog “Animals and Us: The Psychology of Human-Animal Interactions.”  Her co-authored research on police shootings of dogs appeared in a special issue reprint book “We Are Best Friends: Animals in Society” from her Social Sciences article on the framing of human-dog friendships.  Most recently her first book "Identity, Gender, and Tracking: The Reality of Boundaries for Veterinary Students" was published in the New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond book series by Purdue University Press and has since won the American Sociological Association Animals & Society Section's Distinguished Book Award in 2024.  Animals & Society is an elective sociology course that Dr. Vermilya has added to the sociology offerings at each of the institutions where she has taught.  Coming to Denver has been a return to Colorado for Dr. Vermilya who earned her doctorate from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2015.