Brea Perry named associate vice president and vice provost for research

Indiana University’s Brea Perry has been named the next associate vice president for research and vice provost for research for Bloomington, effective immediately, IU Vice President for Research Russell Mumper and IU Bloomington Provost and Executive Vice President Rahul Shrivastav announced.

As associate vice president and vice provost for research, Perry will be a member of the leadership teams for IU Research and the Office of the Provost. She will oversee centrally administered centers and institutes, as well as core services and facilities. She will also collaborate closely with faculty, academic deans, and other university and campus leaders to strategically advance the campus’s research portfolio and fulfill the ambitious goals in the IU Bloomington 2030 strategic plan.

Perry is the Allen D. and Polly S. Grimshaw Professor of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences and an associate director of the Irsay Institute, which fosters sociomedical sciences research. She served as interim associate vice president for research and vice provost for research beginning in July 2022.

“As interim leader, Brea led through a time of enormous change for IU Research,” Mumper said. “She demonstrated her ability to coalesce groups, develop creative solutions and support faculty researchers seeking to grow.

“We are thrilled to continue to benefit from her extensive experience as a successful researcher and her solutions-oriented leadership. She is the right person at the right time to lead implementation of the research components of the IU 2030 strategic plan for the Bloomington campus.”

Since coming to IU, Perry has procured more than $19 million in extramural funding for her research. She has received grants from multiple National Institutes of Health, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Aging, as well as the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, Spencer Foundation and others.

She has twice been recognized for her excellence as a faculty mentor — in 2017 by the IU Department of Sociology and in 2022 by the IU Graduate and Professional Student Government. She was named an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine Scholar by the National Academy of Medicine in 2019 and elected to the Sociological Research Association in 2021.

“Over the past year, Brea has left no doubt in her capacity to guide our campus’s broad-sweeping research enterprise into a future of deep student and faculty engagement, expanded external funding and impactful translation,” Shrivastav added. “I am thrilled to continue working with her, especially with the catalyzing factor of IUB 2030 implementation.”

Perry has published her award-winning research in journals such as PNAS, American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Social Science and Medicine.

“I am excited to continue working with Vice President Mumper and the rest of the IU Research team, helping to foster new research collaborations and enhance the infrastructure needed to bolster faculty research and achieve the IU 2030 goals for research,” Perry said. “It will be both fun and an enormous honor to find new ways to connect colleagues in Bloomington and across the university and ensure they have the support they need to succeed.”

Her research and teaching interests include social networks, medical sociology, mental illness, aging and biosociology. She is a widely consulted expert in the areas of social networks, stigma, and social determinants and consequences of mental illness, addiction and cognitive aging.

Perry received her M.A. in sociology in 2002 and her Ph.D. in sociology in 2008, both from IU. Before returning to Indiana in 2014, she was an associate professor at the University of Kentucky, where she founded and directed the interdisciplinary Health, Society and Populations Program.