James Kitts joined the University of Massachusetts to cofound the Computational Social Science Institute in 2012, served as the Director of CSSI until 2018, and is now Professor in Sociology. He previously held faculty positions in Management at Columbia University, in the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth College, and in Sociology at the University of Washington. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation and has been called twice to contribute to reports of the National Academies of Sciences in his areas of expertise, particularly computational models of social network dynamics. He has held residential fellowships or workshop leader roles at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, the University of Auckland, New Zealand, Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Frankfurt, Germany. His research recently appeared in American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Networks, and Demography.

Professor Kitts holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from Cornell University, where he supported himself by teaching writing and selling CDs on eBay. He earned an MS in Natural Resource Policy from the University of Michigan and a BA in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College, where he also focused on Creative Writing and Women’s Studies, with a thesis on Ecofeminism. Before attending graduate school, he held a variety of professional appointments: After being fired by PIRG for failing to meet quota and failing to support himself as a busker and guitar teacher in Northampton, MA, he washed dishes and served sodas at an amusement park, broke up cardboard boxes in an office furniture warehouse, manufactured tops of to-go containers, served as a laboratory technician in Prudhoe Bay, AK, and ran a volunteer water quality monitoring program in Cuyahoga County, OH. He was born as a grandchild of illegal immigrants in Rochester, NY, and grew up in eastern CT and western MA. He wrote one fantasy novel, which remains unpublished.