Julia Potter Adams (born July 11, 1957)[1] is an American sociologist who works in the area of comparative and historical sociology.
She conducts research in the areas of state building, gender and family, social theory and knowledge, early modern European politics, and Colonialism and empire.
Her current research focuses on the historical sociology of agency relations and modernity, gender, race, and the representation of academic knowledge on Wikipedia and on other digital platforms.
Adams received a National Science Foundation grant in 2013 to conduct a study of the relationship between gender bias and the portrayal of academics in Wikipedia[8][9] She collaborated with Hannah Bruckner of New York University-Abu Dhabi.
In an interview with Marilyn Wilkes for the MacMillan Report at Yale University in 2010, Adams discusses her research regarding high level forms of patriarchal politics and the historical sociology of family relations in early modern states, as well as the contradictions of agency in contemporary America.