Current Graduate Students
Ates Altinordu
Dissertation topic: “Religious Politics: Political Catholicism and Political Islam in Comparative Perspective.”
Research interests: Ates is a Ph.D. candidate who works on religion and politics, secularism, immigrant incorporation, and citizenship. His dissertation is a comparative analysis of political Catholicism in late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century Germany (1870-1914) and political Islam in contemporary Turkey (1970-2008). Based on these empirical cases, the study analyzes and explains two major puzzles in the study of religious politics: the rise of successful religious parties and the incorporation of anti-system religious parties into mainstream polities. Ates received the 2009 Reinhard Bendix Award for the Best Graduate Student Paper given by the Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association for his article “The Politicization of Religion: Political Catholicism and Political Islam in Comparison.” His publications include “After Secularization?”(with Philip S. Gorski), Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 34 (2008), 55-85.
Education: B.A. and M.A. Sociology (Yale Univeristy)
Dana Asbury
Research interests: Ethnography, life in the city, communities, community organizing, activist lifestyles, consensus building and collective decision making, theories of deviance and difference, and the sociology of knowledge.
Education: B.A. Sociology, magna cum laude (The University of Pennsylvania)
Dominik Bartmanski
Research interests: Dominik Bartmanski is interested in social theory and cultural sociology. His primary areas of interest are social hermeneutics, epistemology, political philosophy of liberalism, and social change. He has also focused on the issues related to various aspects of the European integration.
Education: M.A. Political Science (Jagiellonian University), Double M.A. Sociology and European Studies (Jagiellonian University and University of Exeter)
Saglar Bougdaeva
Research interests: Saglar Bougdaeva is in her fifth year of graduate studies at Yale. Saglar’s dissertation work is concerned with ethnicity and mortality in Russia during socialism, at the breakdown of the system, and after Russia’s return to the growth trajectory.
Education: Saglar studied as an undergraduate student at Saint Petersburg University School of Oriental and African Studies in Russia, focusing on indigenous population groups of the Caucasus and Central Asia. In the United States, Saglar received MPH degree at Yale University where she studied the impact of social change on population wellbeing in Russia.
Elizabeth Breese
Research interests: Elizabeth Breese's interests include cultural sociology, trauma theory, and ethnography.
Education: B.A. Sociology, cum laude with Honors in Sociology (Wellesley College)
Sorcha Brophy-Warren
Research interests: Cultural sociology, ethnography, religious and ethnic identity, postcolonialism. Her previous work explored the way that communities and institutions articulate and evaluate religious identities through adherence to moral boundaries.
Education: A.B. The Comparative Study of Religion, with high honors (Harvard University)
Jennifer L. Bryan
Dissertation topic: “Terrorism in Your Own Backyard? The Impact of the World Trade Center Tragedy on Community Life in Jersey City.”
Research interests: Jennifer L. Bryan is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Yale University. Jennifer received a M.Phil. and M.A. in Sociology from Yale, with a special concentration in race and ethnicity and urban and community sociology. As an undergraduate, Jennifer earned a B.A. in Psychology, with a double major in Administration of Justice, and a Criminology Certificate from Rutgers University. Currently, Jennifer is writing her dissertation and expects to complete her Ph.D. in the Spring of 2005. Her dissertation is tentatively titled: “Terrorism in Your Own Backyard? The Impact of the World Trade Center Tragedy on Cross-Cultural Relationships and Community Life in Jersey City.” Building on original ethnographic research (participant observation, oral histories, interviews and content analysis), Jennifer's dissertation examines how the social construction of Jersey City as a “Terror Town” has affected social interactions and relationships among Arab Muslims, African Americans, and Italian Americans in working class neighborhoods of Jersey City. This research has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation; the Center for the Study of Race, Inequality and Politics at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University; the Center for Urban Research and Policy at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University; and the Yale University Dissertation Writing Grant. In addition to research expertise, Jennifer’s professional experience is in community building, conflict resolution, and fundraising for nonprofit community based organizations.
Education: B.A. Psychology, Justice Administration & Criminology (Rutgers University)
Seong Soo Choi
최성수/崔成秀
Research interests: Seongsoo Choi’s primary interests include changes in life courses under radical social changes and their impacts on social inequality, social mobility, political attitudes, and social norms. He is also interested in analytical sociology and social mechanisms.
Education: M. A. Sociology (Yonsei University)
Thomas Crosbie
Education:
Tabitha Decker
Research interests: Tabitha Decker's interests include urban sociology, comparative and historical sociology, and social/spatial theory. A former Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Tabitha examined the gendering of work through a study of women taxi drivers in South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and Malaysia. Tabitha is currently developing a dissertation focused on Dubai's urban development, which seeks to understand relations between the built environment and social, economic, and cultural processes.
Education: B.A. International Relations, Honors (Wellesley College)
Shai Dromi
Research interests: Cultural sociology, sociology of emotion, sociology of morality and media spectatorship.
Education: B.A. Sociology, Cultural Anthropology and Communication (Hebrew University of Jerusalem); M.A. Sociology (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, expected Dec. 2009)
Sarah Egan
Research interests: Sarah’s interests include cultural and political sociology, and particularly the study of social movements. Her dissertation research examines the cultural conflicts surrounding foxhunting and its prohibition in England.
Education: (B. Soc. Sc., M. Soc. Sc., National University of Ireland (UCD), M.A. Sociology, Yale University).
Jesse Einhorn
Education: B.A. Sociology (Haverford College)
Rui Gao
Research interests: Rui Gao’s interests include cultural sociology, social theories, media studies, and gender studies.
Education: B.A. English (Beijing Foreign Studies University); M.A. Sociology (University of Notre Dame)
Alison Gerber
Education:
Caroline Gray
Dissertation topic: “Disfiguring Forms, Disabling Function.”
Research interests: Carrie Gray is interested in disability studies, the sociology of the body, and the cultural meanings of disability and bodily differences. Her research focuses on contrasting societal responses to the problem of disability and incorporation, ranging from genetic modification and medical cures to multicultural identity movements among disabled groups.
Education: B.A. Sociology & Gender Studies (University of California, Davis); M.A. Sociology (University of California, Los Angeles)
Stephanie Greenlea
Research interests: Stephanie is in the combined doctoral program with African American Studies. Her interests include theories of race and racism, intersectionality, social movements and technology. She is currently investigating articulations of and challenges to anti-Black racism in the information age. Her approach pursues interdisciplinary through sociological engagement.
Education: B.A. in Sociology from Emory University
Jeffrey Guhin
Research Interests: Jeff is interested in methodology, culture, theory, and the politics of identity.
John Hartley
Research interests: Faith & Globalization, Iranian Studies, Culture, Religion & Economy, Culture, Religion & Politics, Urban Sociology.
Education: B.A., International Relations with Honors (UC Davis), M.A., Iranian History with Distinction (University of Isfahan, Iran)
Nadya Jaworsky
Research interests: Nadya completed her B.A. in Sociology and American Studies at Wellesley College (2005, summa cum laude). She is the Fanny Bullock Workman Fellow for 2005-2006 as well as a Junior Fellow of the Academy of Political and Social Science. She received departmental honors for her Sociology thesis, an ethnographic case study of two religious organizations using cultural pragmatics. Prior to that, she conducted research on American patriotism in the post-9/11 context, over the course of two summers with funding from Wellesley College and the National Science Foundation. In addition to cultural sociology, organizations, and American political culture, her interests include the sociology of religion and transnational studies. In particular, she seeks to probe the relationship(s) between religion, ethnicity, and citizenship—in other words, the boundaries of “belonging.” Currently, she is the primary research consultant for Peggy Levitt’s forthcoming book God Needs No Passport: Transnational Religious Life. Jointly, they are working on two related articles—one concerning cultural diffusion and social/symbolic boundaries and another about the transnational nature of American religious life. Under a grant awarded by the Metanexus Institute’s Spiritual Capital Research Program, Nadya will begin work on a three-city study of “spiritual capital” in January 2006, as site coordinator and co-investigator for the Danbury, CT site. The project goal is to examine how immigrants—both established and “new”—utilize this sub-species of social capital
Education: B.A. Sociology & American Studies, summa cum laude (Wellesley College)
Aaron D. Johnston
Dissertation topic: “Film in the Netherlands and Sweden: A Two-Country Comparison of the Film Field.”
Research interests: My substantive interests include (1) the distribution of inequalities in European societies and on how such inequalities are structured by the labor market as well as social policies, (2) the development of international institutions, and (3) the emergence of protest. My methodological interests are in statistical and computer simulation models.
Education: B.A. International Studies, summa cum laude (Middlebury College); M.A. Social Sciences, Honors (University of Amsterdam); M.Sc. Sociology, Distinction (University of Oxford)
Andrew Junker
Research interests: Andy has analytical interests in religion, culture, and politics and regional interests focused on East Asia, especially China. Andy has studied, researched, or worked in Japan, China, Thailand, Nepal and India, including one year researching Japanese and Tibetan artisanship as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow. His foreign language training is in Chinese and Japanese, including intensive study at the Associated Kyoto Program (Dõshisha University, Kyoto), the East Asian Summer Language Institute (Indiana University), and the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University (Beijing). At Yale, Andy has used ethnography to explore the interplay of myths, legends and truth claims in the mobilization of an immigrant community.
Education: B.A. East Asian Studies (Wesleyan University); M.A. Religious Studies (Indiana University)
Esther Kim
Research Interests: Immigration, ethnography, race and ethnicity, education, Asian American Studies. Currently studying migrant workers in New Haven.
Education: B.A. Sociology and Education (UCLA); M.A. Education, culture and society (University of Pennsylvania)
Joseph Klett
Research Interests: Art, New Media, and Social Movements
Education: B.A. Sociology, (University of California, San Diego)
Matthew Lawrence
Education: B.A. American Studies and English (2001) with university distinction and department honors, (Stanford University), and MEd Education Policy and Management (2007), (Harvard University)
Victoria Lee
Research interests: I am currently interested in social movements, the process of democratization, and the mechanisms that contribute to transnational inequalities. As a Presidential Scholar at Dartmouth, my research focused on comparative historical analysis of struggles against authoritarian regimes in countries such as Iran, South Korea and Indonesia. My senior thesis examined the role of the 1998 student movement in the overthrow of Indonesia's General Suharto based on interviews with former student leaders, teachers and journalists and the structural factors that allowed students to come to the forefront of the movement. As a former Fulbright Fellow in 2005-2006, I was a school teacher in East Java for a year and worked with a local NGO seeking to assist street children and victims of sex trafficking. Having travelled to Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam during my Fulbright year has increased my desire to broaden my knowledge of Southeast Asia while at Yale.
Education: B.A. History and Sociology with High Honors, magna cum laude, (Dartmouth College), Recipient of the John M. Mecklin Prize in Sociology (2005). On Leave: Pursuing a J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall)
Eric Lum
Research interests: Eric Lum works in economic sociology, law and society, theory and historical sociology. He has recently presented papers on the sociology of private property rights.See personal webpage for more information.
Education: B.A. Sociology (2003), summa cum laude, and J.D (2006). (Cornell University)
Carolyn Ly
Research interests: Carolyn's main areas of interest are Stratification & Inequality, and Cultural Sociology. She plans to combine ethnographic and
quantitative methods to examine socioeconomic mobility in education and labor market sectors, with attention to micro level factors such as interpersonal relationships, and value systems. She also has conducted research on media and cultural images of Asian Americans.
Education: B.A. Sociology, summa cum laude (Hunter College, City University of New York); Phi Beta Kappa
Timothy Malacarne
Education:
Patricia Maloney
Research interests: Patricia Maloney is a graduate student currently interested in social stratification and educational inequality. She has recently concluded her two-year commitment to Teach For America, a national organization designed to erase the achievement gap in American public schools. At the present time, her research focuses on the pro-anorexia internet movement and the effects of school and society on adolescent sexuality.
Education: B.A. Sociology and Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa; M.A. Education, University of Pennsylvania; M.A. Sociology, Yale University
Warren McKinney
Research interests: My research interests primarily include the effects of migration within the African Diaspora and the Pan Africanist development and social change initiatives originating from the diasporic community and the continent. My other interests surround the intersectionality of race, class and gender.
Education: B.A. Africana Studies and Sociology (Vassar College)
Shoham Melamed
Dissertation topic: “Maternal Politics, Fertility Levels and Reproductive Regimes: The Case of Jewish Women’s Activism in America and Palestine.”
Education: B.A. Sociology & Anthropology, and Film & Television Studies, magna cum laude (Tel Aviv University); M.A. Sociology & Anthropology, magna cum laude (Tel Aviv University)
Sylvia Mitraud
Dissertation topic: “Social Mobility in Conservation and Development Projects: A Comparative Study in Brazil.”
Research interests: Sylvia’s research interests are in the broad area of social ecology, and more specifically environmental sociology, social movements, and sustainable development. Her dissertation studies processes of social mobilization and change in regions where Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) are implemented. Empirical data comes from four case studies in Brazil: two in the Amazon floodplain and two in the northeastern portion of the Atlantic Forest known as the “cacao zone.” Adopting a temporal-relational framework, the major claim of the dissertation is that while environmental and economic sustainability are central to successful projects, social sustainability — understood not as the status of well-being and social justice indicators but rather as the processes behind them: the complex interactions among structures, agents, and culture through time in each specific place — is at least as important and thus should be reflected in our approaches to project design, implementation, evaluation, and research. The intellectual thrust for the dissertation project is the outcome of her prior work as ICDP manager and supervisor for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Brazil for five years, and a thesis on sustainable development which she wrote as part of her M.A. in International Studies (1994, Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver). As a practitioner she favors grassroots organizing and facilitation of multi-stakeholder participatory processes. Sylvia is a native of Brazil and has a Bachelor's degree in History (1989) from São Paulo University, Brazil.
Education: B.A. History (University of São Paulo); M.A. International Studies (University of Denver)
Sam Nelson
Sam is interested in religion, politics and historical sociology. His dissertation research is on early modern transnational religion: the political and institutional conditions of early protestant missionary movements and the relationship between state formation and religious organization.
Education: B.A. Sociology, honors (University of Chicago)
Natalie Nitsche
Education:
Matthew Norton
Research interests: Matthew Norton has focused on a linked series of questions relating to conflict, culture, sentiment, epistemology, and politics in a variety of professional and research settings. He is currently looking at the study of war from the vantage of meaning, the construction and destruction of moral communities, the role of art in enabling solidarity, and the interface of culture and disaster.
Education: B.A. Philosophy (Villanova University); M.A. Conflict Resolution (Bradford University)
Zi Pan
Dissertation topic: “Consequences of Foreign Direct Investment in Transitional Economics.”
Research interests: Zi Pan is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Yale University. Her dissertation concerns both the developmental and distributional effects of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows and penetration over time, across and within the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe and China in the first decade after 1989. Her research interests include economic sociology, sociology of development, life course and comparative/historical sociology.
Education: B.A. Finance (Xi’an Jiaotong University); M.Sc. Economics (University of Oslo)
Kristin Plys
Research interests: Historical sociology, labor and social movements, political economy, quantitative methods.
Education: B.A. Sociology, with Honors, Certificate in Cross-National Sociology and International Development (The Johns Hopkins University)
Elizabeth Roberto
Education: B.A. Human Services, cum laude, special honors (George Washington University); M.P.A. Public Administration, Education & Social Policy (George Washington University)
Jensen Sass
Education: B.A. History and Geography (Monash University)
David Scales
Research interests: David Scales is a joint M.D./Ph.D. student with interests in the mechanisms that initiate and perpetuate social inequalities, health disparities, and structural determinants of health. Just starting the Sociology phase of his combined degree, he hopes to focus on how epidemics mediate a community’s dynamics with the State.
Education: B.A. Chemistry and American History (University of Pennsylvania); M.Phil. History and Philosophy of Science & Medicine (University of Cambridge)
Inge Schmidt
Research interests: Inge Schmidt is interested in Political Sociology and Cultural Sociology. Currently, her research is on voting and elections in the United states with a focus on culture and meaning.
Education: B.A. Sociology and Politics, cum laude with High Honors (Mount Holyoke College)
Christine Slaughter
Research interests: Christine Slaughter has interests in the fields of culture, theory, and gender. She is particularly interested in the constitution of identity and solidarity in democratic and multicultural contexts. Her previous work has addressed gender in American political and civil discourse, using Nancy Pelosi as a case study.
Education: B.A. Ethics, Politics & Economics, cum laude with distinction in Ethics, Politics, & Economics (Yale University)
Adrienne Wallace
Research Interests: Adrienne is interested in understanding cultural aspects of democracy, in particular she examines the ways in which literature and journalism impact democratic lay theory. All this is because she is ultimately interested in understanding the expression of choice as part of the democratic process and analyzing literary works as a manifestation of and a practice that encourages democratic reasoning.
Education: B.A. cum laude with High Honors, Sociology, Mount Holyoke College
Yingyao Wang
Education: M.A. Communication (Beijing University); B.A. Journalism (Fudan University)
Marianne Wilson
Education: B.A. Sociology, cum laude with Honors in Sociology (Wake Forest University)
Xiaohong Xu
Research interests: Xiaohong Xu’s primary interests include historical/comparative sociology, cultural sociology, social and political theory. He is currently working on projects dealing with religion and politics in early modern Europe.
Education: B.A. Sociology (Peking University); M.A. Sociology (University of Notre Dame)
Michael Yarbrough
Research interests: Michael Yarbrough works in the areas of law and society; family; the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality; and political subjectivity. He is particularly interested in the roles of law and legal institutions in interpersonal relationships. A recent graduate of the Yale Law School through the joint J.D./Ph.D. program, Michael is currently developing a dissertation comparing marriage reform debates in the United States and South Africa, which seeks to understand the relationship between legal change and changing understandings of family and self. He is also researching small-claims disputes among family members, friends, and others with pre-existing relationships.
Education: B.A. Sociology, with honors (University of Chicago); J.D. Yale Law School, 2007
M.A. Sociology, Yale University, 2007
Alexei Zelenev
Research interests: Alexei Zelenev is a 3rd year Ph.D Student in the department of Sociology. His interests include social integration, inequality, socioeconomic development and qualitative, as well as quantitative methods. He is a member of the Center for Comparative Research as well as the Center for Inequality and the Life Course. Prior to joining Yale, he was an associate economist in the Regional Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. His research has been published in the “Journal of Urban Policy”and in the Chicago Fed?s“Economic Perspectives”, and has been cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Education: B.A. Economics, with honors (University of Chicago), M.A. Sociology, Yale University.
Sandy Zhao
Research interests: Culture and crime: cultural construction of criminal identity, the effects of cultural symbols on criminology, deviance theories; race/ethnicity,immigration, economic sociology, and social movements.
Education: B.A. Sociology and Government, magna cum laude. (Cornell University)