Gubrium received his PhD in sociology specializing in social psychology from Wayne State University in 1970, with a dissertation titled Environmental Age-Concentration and Personal Resources: a Study of Their Impact on the Morale of the Aged.
[4] Gubrium's areas of research are aging, health, care, everyday life, family discourse, human services ethnography, identity construction, social interaction, qualitative methods, and narrative analysis.
The aim is to locate and describe social forms (identity, family, aging, health, policy, service and care) as practices of narrativity.
His research on the everyday practice of caregiving in nursing homes, originally described in his monograph "Living and Dying at Murray Manor," presents the details of care from the perspectives of the residents, the staff and family members.
The program centers on narrative events and strategic storytelling in everyday life, especially in an institutional context, with attention to implications for social policy.
[citation needed] Gubrium received a Distinguished Scholar award from the American Sociological Association's Section on Aging and the Life Course in 1996.
[12] Along with several collaborators, he also has published numerous related chapters and journal articles on the structure of everyday life, aging and the life course, the Alzheimer's disease movement, the physical rehabilitation process, children with ADHD, the social organization of care, human service practice, constructions of family, qualitative methodology, ethnographic fieldwork, and narrative analysis.