Gibson grew up in
Philadelphia received his
B.A., magna cum laude, from
Eastern College. He then attended
Columbia University, where he received his
M.A. in 1994, and
M.Phil. in 1995, both in sociology. From 1997 to 1999, Gibson was a research associate to
Harrison White and
Kathryn Neckerman for the project funded by the
Citigroup Behavioral Sciences Research Council (chaired by
James March) entitled, “Conflict and Cooperation in Work Groups.” He completed a
PhD with distinction, in 1999, also from Columbia. Under the supervision of
Peter Bearman along with advisors
Randall Collins, and
Harrison White, he completed his dissertation entitled
Taking Turns and Talking Ties: Conversational Sequences in Business Meetings. For his doctoral research, Gibson: Funded by a
National Science Foundation grant, Gibson joined the
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy as a post-doctoral fellow under the direction of
Harrison White for the project titled:
“Dynamics From Social Settings: Representations of Interdependent Social Forms”. Gibson then accepted a position of assistant professor at
Harvard University, where he taught from 2001 to 2005, and then moved to the
University of Pennsylvania, also as an assistant professor. He was briefly a lecturer at
Princeton University before accepting a position as
associate professor of sociology at the
University of Notre Dame in 2013. He has served on the editorial boards of the journals
Social Psychology Quarterly (2007–2009) and
Sociological Theory (2011–2012). ==Contributions==