Stephanie Canizales is pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of
Southern California in the Department of Sociology. Stephanie
specializes in Central American migration, race/ethnicity, and
the 1.5 and second generations.
Raeven Faye Chandler is a PhD Candidate in Demography and Rural
Sociology at Penn State University. Her main areas of
interest include health and immigration and her research focuses
on individual, family, and community well-being. She is
particularly interested in spatial and social determinants of
health and other forms of well-being including poverty and
mobility along the U.S.
Tressie McMillan Cottom is a PhD student in the Sociology
Department at Emory University in Atlanta, GA where she studies .
stratification, organizations, and education. Her doctoral
research examines mechanisms of within and between sector
stratification within the context of the rapid expansion of
for-profit colleges like The University of Phoenix. Why have 2.5
million students enrolled in the most expensive, most contested
sector of U.S. higher education? How is this era of higher
education expansion different from previous eras?
Matthew Curry is a doctoral candidate in sociology at UCLA and a
student affiliate at the California Center for Population
Research (CCPR). His areas of interest include social
stratification and education, particularly the causes and effects
of educational inequalities. His dissertation focuses on how
economic context impacts the causal effects of higher education
on socioeconomic outcomes.
Kathryn Edwards is a 4th-year PhD student in Economics at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is a proud native Texan
and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007.
Afterwards she taught English in Prague for one year and worked
at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. for three
before deciding to pursue her PhD. Kathryn’s focus is in Public
and Labor Economics, and her dissertation will examine the
interaction of the public and private safety net after job loss.
I was born and raised in a small rural, farmworking community in
California’s San Joaquin Valley. I am a PhD student of
political science and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doctoral
fellow at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. I study the
effects of public policy on immigrant health. I focus on
immigrants of Latin American origin and my current projects focus
specifically on the health of women and youth. My work aims
at developing a critical understanding of the structures of power
and privilege that inform policy and ultimately affect immigrant
health.
Katherine Maurer, LMSW, is a Ph.D. candidate at NYU’s Silver
School of Social Work. Kate’s research focuses on the
intergenerational transmission of family violence, particularly
the study of the physiological impact of persistent family
violence. She was a research fellow for three years with NYU’s
McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research conducting
research on the social reproduction of structural disadvantage in
the context of economic and ethnic/racial segregation and the
application of social capital in social work policy and practice.
Daphne earned her Bachelor of Science in Human and Organizational
Development from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.
Upon graduating, Daphne began her career as an educator through
Teach for America. Her experience as a Title I elementary
school teacher informed her research interests within the
substantive areas of education, race, class, gender, and
mixed-methods.
Sarah Rios is a doctoral student in the Sociology department at
the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research project
examines the living conditions of farmworkers in the Central
Valley, particularly as they relate to health disparities from
daily exposure to contaminated air, water, and pesticides.
Originally from Salinas-Watsonville Valley, California she
developed a passion for healthy and sustainable environments
after witnessing the effects of mono-agriculture on farmworkers’
health.
Jennifer (Jen) Scott is a doctoral candidate in social work at
the University of Texas at Austin and a graduate student fellow
at the UT Urban Ethnography Lab. Her research is focused on the
experiences of people in poverty, particularly related to
understanding the ways families and communities work together to
support their economic survival and community-based initiatives
to create long-term policy change. Concurrently with her research
for the PhD, Jen has been working with Austin-based organizations
dedicated to labor and immigrant rights.
Alex is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago’s
School of Social Service Administration. Her research interests
include low-wage work, the US social safety net, poverty and
social inequality, gender, and work-family policy. Her
dissertation research will examine changes in family economic
circumstances around a birth, and look at the effects of
state-provided paid family leave policies on the economic
wellbeing of families with infants.
Julia Shu-Huah Wang is a social worker and a doctoral candidate
at the Columbia University School of Social Work, concentrating
in Social Policy and Policy Analysis. Her research interests
include poverty and immigration, with a focus on family
wellbeing. She is currently working on several research projects,
including impacts of social assistance policies on child
wellbeing and long-term family self-sufficiency; the
cost-effectiveness of an economic empowering intervention in
Uganda; immigration integration and enforcement policies; and
racial disparities in maternal employment.
Ellen Whitehead is a third- year graduate student in the
Sociology department at Rice University. She is a graduate
student affiliate with the Program for the Study of
Ethnicity, Race, and Culture, housed within Rice
University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. Her areas
of interest include the private and public safety nets and
neighborhood-level poverty, with a broader focus on understanding
how racial inequalities are transmitted across generations.
Ellen’s current projects examine resource sharing between
extended kin, the implications of this kin suppo
