Rachel Allison joined the faculty at Mississippi State University in 2014 after receiving her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a sport sociologist who studies the status of women in U.S. elite sport, with a particular focus on women's professional soccer. She is the author of Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women's Professional Soccer, published in 2018 with Rutgers University Press. Secondary areas of interest include education and family.  Dr. Allison has used survey, interview, and ethnographic methods in her research, which has been published in journals such as Journal of Marriage & Family, Sociological Forum, and Sociology of Sport Journal.