Rachel Skaggs

Rachel Skaggs is a sociologist who conducts research about artistic careers and arts ecosystems. Rachel holds the Lawrence and Isabel Barnett Professorship in Arts Management at The Ohio State University, where she teaches classes about arts entrepreneurship, the social world of the arts, and empirical research methods. Rachel has worked with SNAAP on a number of reports, DataBriefs, and on the survey itself since 2016. Currently, Rachel is conducting two primary lines of research. One follows a broad array of artists and creative workers, with attention given to precariously situated artists, tracking the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their lives and livelihoods via qualitative interviews. In her second line of research, Rachel is writing a book about the careers of Nashville songwriters in the 21st century, a period when collaboration increased between songwriters in response to significant changes and precarity across the music industry. Rachel cares deeply about research mentorship for the next generation of scholars and practitioners within our field and is hopeful for a future in which opportunities to pursue an artistic career in the United States are plentiful, sustainable, and good for artists and their communities.