Sociology

Cary Beckwith,
Cary comes to sociology with a background in publishing, community organizing, and waiting tables.  As a graduate student he is interested broadly in the sociology of markets, culture, and knowledge.  He is particularly interested in how people negotiate the market's influence on areas of life considered off-limits to the market.  He has a B.A. in philosophy from Amherst College.

Cheng Cheng,
Cheng graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012 with a BA in Sociology with Concentration in Analysis and Research. Her areas of interest include aging, demography, and family sociology. Her senior honors thesis examined the interactive effects of retirement and children on the mental health of older Americans. While at UW-Madison, she worked as a research assistant in Wisconsin’s Applied Population Lab and for the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study. Cheng is also part of the Office of Population Research.

Angela Dixon received a B.S. in Psychology and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011). Prior to coming to Princeton in fall 2012, she lived in 11 countries as a volunteer with local organizations. Her experiences in a variety of cross-national contexts (including Singapore, England, Tanzania, and Mexico) have prompted a strong interest in the cultural construction of race and its implications for social and economic mobility for people of African descent. Her research interests include race/ethnicity, sociology of education, and social stratification.

Janeria Dunlap graduated from Duke University in 2011 with a BA in sociology and in English. Janeria's past work has addressed topics ranging from stereotype threat and the governance of global supply chains. Her research interests include race/ethnicity, stratification, and economic sociology. She is interested in developing projects that explore the links between group boundaries and economic interaction.

Linsey Edwards,
MA Sociology of Education (New York University); BA Journalism (University of Maryland, College Park). Following the completion of her undergraduate degree, Linsey worked as an education researcher at the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education while a graduate student at NYU, and most recently at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College. She has also spent several years in K-12 education and college access programming in New York City. Linsey’s research interests are in education, social inequality, race/ethnicity, gender, and neighborhoods/residential segregation.

Alfredo García,
BS in Biological Anthropology and Religious Studies, Duke University.  MTS, Religions of the Americas, Harvard Divinity School.  Alfredo's recent research has focused on the segment of the U.S. population that identifies itself as having "no religion" on surveys, a diverse group that includes the irreligious, unreligious, anti-religious, and anti-clerical.  Of particular interest to Alfredo are those who disaffiliate from their religion of birth and also those who join secular organizations such as American Atheists, Humanist societies, etc.  Alfredo has also dabbled in journalism as a former writer for the Religion News Service and a blogger. (web site)

Sergio Galaz García,
BA Political Science and International Relations (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico City). Sergio’s senior thesis use statistical methods to explore the dynamics of conflict between informal economies and the local government in Mexico City. Prior to entering graduate school, Sergio worked to introduce Budgeting for Results techniques as an internal consultant in the Mexico City Government. His interests include sociology of culture, sociology of space, and political sociology.

Aaron Gottlieb,
B.A., Public Affairs and Political Science, Syracuse University; M.S., Social Welfare Policy, Columbia University. Aaron is interested in exploring the life-course effects of childhood poverty, especially pertaining to education and criminal justice outcomes. He is currently using Fragile Families data to examine the relationship between the Great Recession and private financial transfers. Aaron is also part of OPR

Heba Gowayed earned a BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo (AUC) and an MA in Sociology from Columbia University. Upon graduating from the AUC, she became a researcher at the Social Research Center of the same institution, on a team that designed and oversaw the implementation of the Egyptian Conditional Cash transfer; a poverty alleviation program. Heba's areas of interest include Economic Sociology and Social Policy.

Yossi Harpaz,
M.A. in Sociology and Anthropology, Tel-Aviv University (2009). Yossi's research interests include ethnicity, nationalism, identity and the state. His previous research focused on Israelis who obtained passports in their European countries of origin, analyzing the way they understood and experienced the status of dual citizenship. He is currently interested in studying the dynamics of European ethnic nationalism by carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in the Balkans.

Glenn Harrison,
B.A. Sociology, Reed College. Glenn's main interests lie in the intersection of sociology of culture, economic sociology and network analysis. His previous research examined the network of collaborations between popular music artists, with results suggesting that more collaborative artists experienced higher rates of success than their noncollaborative peers.

Caroline Holcombe received her B.A. in Sociology and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality from Rice University (2009). Since graduating, she has worked her way from a research intern to director of social measurement and evaluation at Children at Risk in Houston, devoting much of her attention to the use of data in education. She is interested in the sociology of the family, sociology of education, and stratification.

Sarah James,
Graduated from Rice University in 2012 with a B.A. in Sociology and a Minor in Business. Her research interests include education, demography, and family, and she is also a part of the Office of Population Research. Her undergraduate honors thesis examined attitudes toward undocumented immigration policies among residents of Houston, Texas. While at Rice, Sarah was also a part of the NSF-funded Perceptions of Women Academic Scientists study and Religion and Public Life Program.

Allison Kenney, 
B.A. Public Policy Studies and German Languages & Literature, Duke University. Following her undergraduate degree, Allison spent one year in Essen, Germany as a Fulbright Fellow and then three years in Chicago, Illinois working for the Distributed Leadership Study at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. Her research interests include sociology of education, organizational studies, and leadership. 

Heather Kugelmass,
Heather Kugelmass earned an M.A. in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (Columbia University) and a B.A. in Psychology (Stony Brook University). Heather’s areas of interest include racial inequality, social psychology, and higher education. Her master’s thesis examined college characteristics related to racial disparities in the cognitive gains of undergraduates. Prior to joining Princeton University’s graduate program in sociology, Heather worked for the Collegiate Learning Assessment.

Jean Nava earned B.A.'s in Sociology, Economics, and Mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin. His Honors thesis explored the impact emigration has had on population structure in Mexico on a state and regional level by examining census data and providing a brief historical analysis of Mexico-to-U.S. migration. His research interests include political economy, economic sociology, neoliberalism and globalization, the international flow of labor, and macroeconomic processes in general.

Arum Park,
BA and MA in Sociology, Seoul National University. Arum's research interests are focused on the issues of information society including internet community, internet addiction, information policy and digital divide. For her master's thesis, she researched the impact of commercial factors on the trust of internet communities. Prior to entering doctorate program, she worked as an intern at the Internet Addiction Prevention Center in Seoul, Korea.

Kendall Park,
B.A. in Sociology and Psychology from Vanderbilt University. While at Vanderbilt, Kendall’s worked as a researcher on gender and the media. After graduation, her work focused on cultural institutions and policy. She is particularly interested in food, food culture, and nutritional policy.

Melanie Wright,
B.A. in Public Policy and Theater Studies, Duke University. Melanie's research interests include the causes of the achievement gap during early childhood, particularly from a family neighborhood perspective. She is also interested in the government's role in mitigating inequalities among children. Before graduate school, she worked as a research assistant on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Project and researched social capital among disadvantaged single mothers.

Post-General:

Maria Abascal,
BA Sociology, Columbia University. Maria’s broad interests include political sociology and immigration. Her previous research includes a study of Cuban-American party identification and a comparative study of city council meetings in two Florida cities with vastly different levels of immigration.

Edward Berchick,
B.A., Health & Societies and Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania; M.P.H., Yale University. Edward's research focuses on the relationship between health and inequality across people, populations, and cohorts. His previous research examined socieconomic inequality and the health consequences of involuntary job loss.  He is in the joint degree program in social policy and the Office of Population Research.

Yael Berda,
Yael received her LLB in Law from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and wrote her masters thesis in Tel Aviv University's Sociology and Anthropology department on the military bureaucracy in the occupied territories, an institutional ethnography of the permit regime in the west bank from 2000 - 2006 (Forthcoming, 2010, Van Leer institute and Hakibutz hameuhad publishing ). Formerly a Human rights lawyer, Yael's research focuses on bureaucratic and administrative legacies, the relationship between state bureaucracies and human rights, colonial influences on modalities of organization in post colonies, state violence and collective memory. She is particularly interested on how administrative structures persist and transform following regime change in states. She is also interested in historical comparative sociology, urban sociology, sociology of law, sociology of culture and social theory. Yael was happy to take part in the SSRC's pre dissertation fellowship on state violence. Before she came to Princeton she was a lawyer and ran political campaigns. You can read more about her at LAPA.

Sarah Brayne,
B.A. (Hons), Sociology, the University of British Columbia. Sarah is a doctoral student in the Joint Degree Program in Sociology and Social Policy. Her research interests include social stratification and inequality, the criminal justice system, and comparative social policy. Her past work has focused on police policy reform, the consequences of criminal justice surveillance, and the effects of the recent recession on the global middle class. Sarah is the recipient of a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Angèle Christin,
BA Sociology (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris). MA Social Sciences (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2006). Angèle has been working in France on culture and criminal justice. Her Master's thesis, an ethnography of a criminal procedure in a  Parisian courthouse, has been turned into a book: Comparutions immédiates. Enquête sur une pratique judiciaire (La Découverte, 2008). Her current work focuses on the recent transformations of journalism in the United States and France. Her interests include culture, economic sociology, law, and comparative sociology.

Alexander Davis,
B.S. in Sociology and Psychology, James Madison University. Alex’s research interests include culture, gender, sexualities, inequality, and organizations. His previous research has examined gender actualization on reality makeover shows and the use of fashion to mobilize multiple and dynamic gender performances. His current work focuses on the structural determinants of homophobia and the organizational production of gender categories and boundaries.

Elizabeth S Derickson,
BA Psychology and Public Policy (Swarthmore College). Her research interests include urban and suburban sociology, inequality, social policy, socio-spatial relations, and culture. Her work includes studies of neighborhood gentrification in New York City, suburban affordable housing development, the social organization of urban small business, and the culture of play in city parks.

Elaine Enriquez,
Elaine graduated with a B.A. in Religious Studies from the university of Arizona in 2001, followed by two years in Kazakhstan, two years working in business, then two years studying for a Masters in Russian (University of Arizona, 2007). Areas of sociological interest include economics, specifically informal economies, political sociology of the state, and punishment. She is currently conducting research on prison economies as well as state capacity in developing countries.

Rachael-Heath Ferguson,
B.A. Sociology, Columbia University. Rachael's research interests include ethnography, inequality, culture, social networks, and urban sociology. Her current focus is on the structure and interactions of networked groups in the informal economy, notions of durable inequality, and the formation of social capital in disenfranchised populations. Previously, Rachael studied Philosophy and Theology at the University of Durham (England) and worked for several years as a Wall Street equities trader.

René Flores,
B.A. Interdisciplinary Studies (University of California-Berkeley). While at Berkeley, René conducted a study on the social transformation of the Salvadorean oligarchy from plantation owners into financial tycoons following the country's civil war. For his senior thesis, he conducted fieldwork in several communities in North Eastern Pennsylvania that passed anti-immigrant ordinances. His research interests include immigration, ethnic conflict, race and ethnicity, and social stratification in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. Before coming to Princeton, he was a research assistant at El Colegio de México in Mexico City. René is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Denia Garcia,
B.A. Sociology and Psychology (Northwestern University). Denia's interests include race/ethnicity, culture and non-profit and ethnic organizations. Her previous research was a qualitative study of status differentiation among youth in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Before starting her graduate studies at Princeton, Denia worked at a non-profit legal assistance agency in Chicago.

Lauren Gaydosh,
Lauren received her B.A. in Sociology and Women's Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include the social determinants of health, and the intersection of health, family and gender in the context of development. She is currently working on a project investigating the health and social consequences of parental absence in rural Tanzania. Prior to coming to Princeton she worked for Poverty Action Lab on randomized health economics experiments in Zambia. Lauren is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Julia Gelatt,
B.A. Sociology/Anthropology (Carleton College). Julia's research interests include immigration, immigrant assimilation, inequality, demography, and gender. Her dissertation focuses on the role of immigration status in shaping children and young adults' health and well-being. Before coming to Princeton, Julia worked at the Migration Policy Institute, researching trends in immigration and labor force growth, the second generation, and shifts in federal policies related to immigrant assimilation. Julia is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

Kerstin Gentsch received her B.A. in Economics and Linguistics from Swarthmore College in 2005. Before coming to Princeton, she worked as a research assistant at Urban Institute. Her primary research interests lie in higher education. Her current work focuses on selective college admissions, as well as college major choice and academic performance among undergraduates in the U.S.

James Gibbon,
BA Wheaton College. James' main interests include religion, migration and the Near East, with special emphasis on the role of Islam in modern Turkey and the experiences of Muslim immigrants in the U.S. Before attending Princeton, James spent three years in Istanbul, initially working as the finance manager for a disaster relief project and later teaching English as a foreign language.

Joanne Wang Golann,
B.A. English, Amherst College (2004). M.A. Social Sciences, University of Chicago (2006). Joanne's research interests include social inequality, higher education, and family. She has worked as a senior research assistant at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, and as an English teaching assistant in Taiwan under the Fulbright program. Her past research has focused on community colleges, the high school to college transition, and undocumented day laborers.

Angelina Grigoryeva,
Angelina graduated with a BA in Sociology from the State University-Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia) in 2010. Her broad interests include economic sociology, social inequlity, and quantitative methods.

Sara Nephew Hassani,
BA Sociology (University of California, Berkeley). Sara's interests include economic sociology, sociology of law, and the sociology of disaster. Her current research explores the role of homeowners insurance in household disaster recovery process and outcomes. She draws upon interviews and ethnographic observations of insurance claims activity collected in the aftermath of two San Diego, California area wildfires, historical data on other natural hazard events (i.e. fire, flood, hurricane, and earthquake), and historical data pertaining to personal lines insurance practices. Sara's previous research focused on inequalities in Internet accessibility and use.

Jennifer Huynh,
B.A. Sociology (University of California, Berkeley), M.A. Anthropology (University of Bristol). Jennifer's general interests include immigration, ethnography, and race/ethnicity. Her previous research included work in central/southern Vietnam with racial minorities and in the United Kingdom with first and second generation Somali immigrants. Before joining Princeton, she worked as a sociology instructor in northeast China.

Patrick Ishizuka,
B.A. Philosophy, Santa Clara University. Patrick’s research focuses on the intersection of work, family, and gender. Prior to coming to Princeton, he worked for several years in education, both in the United States and in Europe. Patrick is affiliated with the Office of Population Research and is in the joint degree program in sociology and social policy.

Devra Jaffe-Berkowitz,
B.A. University of Pennsylvania, M.A. Rice University (Sociology of Religion). Devra's interests include religion, culture, families, and minority groups.  Her current research looks at the ways in which individual religious identities are formed in religiously pluralistic societies where identity involves agency - the act of choosing.

Erin Johnston,
B.A. Sociology, Psychology (Rutgers University). Erin’s main areas of interest include culture, religion, social psychology, social and collective identities, and new religious and social movements. Erin’s research includes an investigation of the consequences of contextual racial diversity within US congregations on members’ congregational involvement as well as ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in the New Jersey neo-Pagan community. For more information, go to:  https://sites.google.com/site/ejohnsto/home.

Sarah Kaiksow holds a Masters in Socio-Legal Studies from the University of Oxford (Balliol College), a Masters in Arab Studies from Georgetown, and Bachelors in Sociology and Women's Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include the sociology of law (with a focus on international law and Islamic law), the sociology of gender (with a focus on gender in cross-cultural perspectives), political sociology (with a focus on variations in state formation) and the sociology of the Middle East. Her dissertation examines the role of human rights monitoring in the advancement of democratic governance. In 2012, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Law and Social Science Division Dissertation Grant. Alongside her academic work, Sarah has worked with local women's NGOs in the Middle East to provide start-up and development support, and has served as a Technical Committee member reviewing grants from the Arab States for the UN WOMEN's Fund for Gender Equality.

Jeffrey Lane,
B.A. in Sociology, Wesleyan University. Jeffrey has received a NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant for his current research integrating face-to-face and digital ethnography to understand teenage peer life, neighborhood violence, and community in Harlem. Jeffrey is the author of Under the Boards: The Cultural Revolution in Basketball (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), an exploration of race and culture in professional and college men's basketball. Jeffrey's interests include urban ethnography, culture, crime and punishment, youth in cities, social uses of technology, consumption, inequality, and race.

Tina Lee,
B.A. Sociology (Wellesley College).  Her current research uses the market transition theory as a framework to understand how market exposure influences the way in which jobs are attained.  Her research interests lie at the intersections of organizations, economic, and political sociology.  Before coming to Princeton, she worked as the bureau manager of The New York Times in Shanghai. Tina is a recipient of the Edna V. Moffett Fellowship.

Karen Levy,
B.A. with High Distinction in Political Science, Indiana University (2003); J.D., magna cum laude, Indiana University School of Law (2006). Karen's research interests include sociology of law, sociology of technology, architecture and design, and social control. Her current work focuses on how law and technology interact to regulate behavior, with special emphasis on legal, organizational, and technological aspects of surveillance, control, and monitoring. Karen is affiliated with Princeton's Program in Law and Public Affairs and the Center for the Study of Social Organization, and has collaborated with the Project for Public Spaces and Intel's Interaction and Experience Research Lab. Before her studies at Princeton, Karen served as a law clerk in the United States Federal Courts. She is a licensed attorney and is admitted to the state and federal bars of Indiana.

Kathryn Li,
B.A. Sociology (Rice University). Kati's research interests include religion, health, and family. She is particularly interested in examining how medicalization has shaped the professionalization of the mental health field. Her past research has focused on public attitudes towards Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and on factors that encourage father engagement.

Karen Muth,
Karen graduated with a B.A. in Sociology and International Studies from Northwestern University in 2007. After graduating, she taught English in Russia and then received a Fulbright grant to do research in Armenia about the families of labor migrants. Her current interests include international migration, ethnicity and nationalism in the former USSR, and online communities and social networks.

Manish Nag graduated with an A.B. (1997) in Computer Science from Brown University. He followed this with 12 years in the software industry as a consultant and entrepreneur. Manish's sociological interests include social networks, globalization, space/place, labor markets, gender, and organizations. As a research assistant at Harvard, Manish devised a method for visualizing network data in geographic space, the output of which will be included in an AJS article on the social structure of the world polity. Manish is the creator of Sonoma, a software tool for creating geospatial visualizations of social network data. For more information, you can visit his webpage.

Rourke L O'Brien,
BA Social Studies, Harvard University. Rourke's interests include poverty, domestic and comparative social welfare policy, and wealth inequality. Prior to his arrival at Princeton, Rourke served as a Policy Analyst with the Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute in Washington where he continues to serve as a nonresident research fellow. His ongoing research includes analyzing the impact of welfare eligibility policy on the savings behavior of the poor. Rourke is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Jayanti Owens,
Jayanti is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and Office of Population Research at Princeton University. She received an M.A. in sociology (with a concentration in demography) from Princeton University and a B.A. in political science, sociology, and public policy from Swarthmore College. Her interests include stratification, education, work, and immigration. Her dissertation project examines how early childhood behavioral development and, later, the personal networks students develop in college influence educational and labor market outcomes, including educational attainment and occupational choice (particularly entrepreneurship and movement into business and the professions). Another project investigates stratification at the top of the educational distribution—namely, how college prestige shapes performance, turnover, and satisfaction in the professions, management consulting, and finance. Before coming to Princeton, Jayanti was a research assistant in the Education Policy Center of The Urban Institute. Her past projects have focused on the use of structural equation models to test social-psychological theories of identity threat through social surveys. This research identifies immigrant minorities’ resilience against negative-ability stereotypes at elite colleges. Jayanti is a recipient of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant.

Michelle Phelps,
Michelle is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Social Policy, with a certificate in demography. Michelle received her B.A. in Psychology from U.C. Berkeley in 2005.  Her research is in the sociology of punishment, focusing in particular on the punitive turn in the U.S. Her dissertation focuses on the rise of probation supervision as a criminal justice sanction and its relationship to mass incarceration. Michelle also has projects looking at the changes in rehabilitative programming in U.S. prisons since the 1970s, the recent decarceration trend and its implications for inequality, and inmates' trajectories across prison contexts. Michelle is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Jacob K. Javits Department of Education Graduate Fellowship. For more information, go to  http://www.princeton.edu/~phelps.

David Pedulla,
David graduated from Boston College in 2004 with a degree in History. At Princeton, he is pursuing a joint PhD in Sociology and Social Policy. His research interests include low-skilled labor markets, racial stratification, economic sociology, and social policy. David's research agenda explores the consequences of the rise in contingent labor utilization, the mechanisms underlying racial discrimination in the labor market, racial differences in job search processes, and the impact of underemployment on workers' outcomes. Prior to pursuing graduate study, David was a research associate at the Brennan Center for Justice, worked in the NYC Mayor's Office to assist in launching the city's innovative Center for Economic Opportunity, and served as an Emerson National Hunger Fellow. For more information, you can visit his webpage at:  http://www.davidpedulla.org.

LiErin Probasco,
B.A., Sociology/Anthropology, Swarthmore College. LiErin's research interests include organizations, inequality, culture, race/ethnicity, gender, and religion. Before attending Princeton, she worked at the Community Development Institute in East Palo Alto, CA, doing community-grounded research.

David Reinecke,
B.A. and M.A. in History and Sociology of Science (University of Pennsylvania). David’s research interests include science studies, information technologies, economic sociology, and the sociology of culture. His past work has examined the challenge of open-source hardware, how to conduct a laptop orchestra, and the market for vintage music equipment. He recently co-taught a class at Penn on the history of science fiction—nerdy perhaps, but oh so fun... (web site)

Alejandro Rivas, Jr.,
Alejandro Rivas, Jr., B.A. Human Biology (Health Policy), Stanford University, 2006. M.A. Sociology (Stratification and Inequality), Stanford University, 2006. Alejandro works in the areas of immigrant assimilation, ethnic entrepreneurship, cultural sociology and demography. His dissertation explores how Latino supermarket chains navigate the diverse and politically charged landscape of Southern California, arguing that the new ethnic entrepreneur will not be distinguished by her ethnicity, or membership in an enclave community, but whether or not she can meet the needs of a community of ethnic consumers without alienating those of other ethnicities. Other work he is engaged in explores the landscape of immigrant-serving organizations across the Philadelphia region, focusing on ethnic and urban/suburban differences in resource availability.

Stephanie Schacht ,
Stephanie has focused her research at Princeton on various organization-based efforts to link social change and economic activity, including corporate social responsibility, ethical investing, and community-based economic activity. She has employed diverse methodologies, qualitative and quantitative, to gain insight into diverse organizational settings. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked in economics research for a major financial firm. She has a BA in Economics, English Literature, and East Asian Studies from Vanderbilt University.

Michael Schlossman,
B.A. Anthropology and Sociology, Amherst College. M.Phil, Criminology, University of Cambridge.  Michael’s interests are in the sociology of crime and punishment, and his research focuses on understanding historical trends in decision making by criminal justice officials.  His previous work utilized qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze how Mexican Americans in the Los Angeles Juvenile Court were punished during the Great Depression.  His dissertation research is a case study of how a large, urban juvenile court responded to increasing youth violence rates and the politicization of youth crime in the 1990s, and compares the juvenile justice system’s and adult criminal justice system’s response to the movement to “get tough” on crime.

Allison Youatt Schnable,
B.A. Social Relations and Political Theory, Michigan State University; M.A. Social Sciences, University of Chicago. Allison's general areas of interest include globalization, non-profit organizations, religion, and culture. She is writing a dissertation that examines the relationship between globalization and the emergence of American grassroots international aid groups. Before coming to Princeton, Allison served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal and was a Presidential Management Fellow with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is a graduate fellow of the Center for the Study of Religion, the Center for Arts and Culture Policy Studies, and the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning.

Lauren G Senesac,
B.A. Sociology and Computer Science (Furman University). Lauren's research interests include technology, culture, networks, and organizations. Her past research has included such diverse topics as neutralization techniques in fairy tales, needs of lower income residents in a neighborhood center, and the relationship between online game design and emergent norms.

Brad Smith,
Since completing an undergraduate business degree (B.A., Baylor University) Brad has traveled domestically and abroad as a management consultant, survived and enjoyed life in the investment banking industry, earned a master’s degree in religion (M.Div., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary), and directed a leadership studies program at Rice University. Reflecting this array of academic and professional experiences, his research interests include the sociology of: culture, morality, economic phenomena, and religion.

Lori D. Smith,
B.A. Indiana University 2005. Lori's interests include development, political economy, organizations, and political sociology. More specifically she is interested in how organizational and institutional theories may be used to understand economic performance and interactions between macroeconomic and microeconomic processes, and to account for variation in organizational arrangements and practices. Her next project will explore the "supply-side" of democratization cross-nationally.

Mahesh Somashekhar,
B.S. Engineering Management Systems, Columbia, 2005. Mahesh studies immigration, organizations, economic sociology, and networks, but he is interested in all parts of sociology. His dissertation looks at entrepreneurship and ethnic economy formation among Mexicans in new immigrant destinations across the U.S. In addition to his dissertation, he has done work on how the meso and micro levels of society connect as well as work that analyzes the evolution of social networks among the Freemasons of Washington D.C. Before coming to Princeton, he worked as a research assistant at the Urban Institute. He also served as a research assistant in sociology, anthropology, political science, and demography as an undergraduate.

Liza Steele,
Dual-degree program at Columbia University - B.A. in Political Science and Master of International Affairs. Liza's dissertation research analyzes beliefs, values, and attitudes under different systems of social stratification in 91 countries with case studies of Brazil, China, France, and the United States. She has a working knowledge of Chinese (Mandarin), Portuguese, French, and Spanish. Liza has published on topics as diverse as the role of religion in the lives of teen mothers in Brazil, and terrorism in Xinjiang, China's predominantly Muslim region. She employs both quantitative and qualitative methodologies in her research. Before coming to Princeton, Liza was the project manager for over 30 primary research projects on media use throughout Southeast Asia, and spent a year interning at the United Nations.

Naomi Sugie,
Naomi's research interests concern crime and punishment, families, and inequality. Her research focuses on the consequences of criminal justice involvement for ex-felons and their families. For her dissertation, Naomi is studying the process of job search at reentry from prison, using Android smartphones to collect real-time behavioral and self-report information. Her second line of research focuses on the recent increase in criminal offending by the elderly in Japan. Before beginning her graduate studies, she worked at the Vera Institute of Justice on child welfare, policing, and jail reentry issues and she is co-author of a book profiling working mothers living in New York City shelters. Naomi is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

Alex Tham,
Alex graduated with a bachelors in social sciences (honors) from the National University of Singapore in 2004. He is interested in the sociology of risk and uncertainty. Before beginning his graduate studies in 2010, he worked as a political analyst and economic strategist. Alex also has an MSc in Applied Finance from Singapore Management University and an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago.

Kyla Thomas,
B.A. Sociology and Communication Studies (University of California, Los Angeles). Kyla’s research interests include the sociology of culture, economic sociology, creativity, and innovation. While at UCLA, she examined the increasing “corporatization” of Broadway musical theater and its impact on levels of innovation, creative success, and creative diversity in the industry.

Catherine Thorkelson,
Catherine Thorkelson earned her B.A. in Evolutionary Biology of the Human Species at Columbia University. She subsequently received a M.Sc. in Human Georgraphy from Umeå University, Sweden. Her Master's thesis examined the role of immigrants' origins on chances of being overqualified in the Swedish labor market. Her broad interests include comparative contexts of immigrant integration in the US and Europe, spatial aspects of inequality, and racial and ethnic identity among immigrants and their children. She is a member of the Sociology Department and the Office of Population Research.

LaTonya Trotter,
LaTonya received her BA from Williams College and her MPH from the University of Washington. Her areas of interest span the substantive fields of social demography, ethnography, and sociology of medicine. A continuing line of research is to understand the intersection of race, geography, and aging. LaTonya is currently undertaking research to explore a different aspect of health and medical care: the health professions. She hopes to explore the interplay between professional identity, professional conflict, and community institutions.

Charles Varner,
A.B., Harvard University. Charles is interested in patterns of social stratification and inequality. He studies the effects of racial and ethnic heterogeneity on both individual attitudes and broader social policy outcomes. He is also interested in organizational and economic sociology.

Erik Vickstrom,
Erik Vickstrom graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Sociology and American Studies. After working at the Murray Research Center at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, he spent almost five years living and working in West Africa. He served as a Peace Corps English teacher in Guinea and then worked in Senegal as Assistant Director of an NGO devoted to cross-cultural training and resource development. After returning to the US, Erik worked on the USAID funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) project in Washington, DC. Erik's interests include international migration and development, inequality, social networks, and West Africa.

Jessica Yiu,
Jessica Yiu. B.A. and M.A. Sociology (University of Toronto). Jessica is a PhD Candidate in Sociology with a specialization in Demography. Her broad interests include race/ethnicity, immigration, social stratification and cross-national research. She is particularly interested in the adaptive processes and outcomes of the children of immigrants in comparative perspective. She is affiliated with the Princeton Global Network on Child Migration. She is a recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Doctoral Fellowship.