My name is Michelle Eilers (she/her). I am a sociologist and social demographer who studies intimate relationships, health, and family formation across the life course. I use diverse quantitative methods and design surveys and experiments to answer questions about how social norms surrounding sexual behavior and relationships are adopted, negotiated, and deployed in complementary and countervailing ways throughout adulthood.

My sole-authored work has been published in Demography and Socius, and my collaborative research appears in Social Forces, Pediatrics, Demography, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Contraception. 

Across my research, I foreground the role of sexual desires, attitudes, and cognitive processes that shape sexual and reproductive behavior.  My recent publication in Social Forces analyzes young women's sexual cognitive dissonance, or conflict between sexual attitudes and desires, and demonstrates its behavioral effect on whether women have sex and use contraception. 

In a sole-author paper published in Demography,  I show that young women's sexual desires are often more predictive of sexual and reproductive behaviors than pregnancy desires, when considered together. More broadly, my work challenges longstanding assumptions that minimize women's sexual desire and highlights the importance of sexuality for enjoyment as central to adulthood, not just for reproduction. 

My research has been generously funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), PEO International, and the UT Graduate School, and recognized with awards from the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), the Midwest Sociological Society (MSS), and the UT College of Liberal Arts Dean's Distinguished PhD Graduate Award.

I completed a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin in May 2023 and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities in June 2025. I earned an MSc in Demography and Health from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BA in Anthropology and Community Health from Tufts University.