Graduate Students on the Market
Caitlin Ahearn
Areas of Specialization: Education, Demography, Quantitative Methods, Social Stratification and Mobility
Dissertation Title: Assessing the Early Adult Economic and Social Returns to Broad-Access Four-Year College Enrollment
Advisors: Jennie E. Brand (Chair), Michael S. Gaddis, Meredith Phillips, Patrick Heuveline
Pablo Geraldo Bastias
Website: https://www.pablogeraldo.com/
Areas of Specialization: Causal Inference, Social Statistics, Stratification and Inequality, Sociology of Education, Computational Social Science, Demography
Dissertation Title: Essays in Causality and Educational Inequality
Advisors: Jennie E. Brand (co-chair), Jacob G. Foster (co-chai), Chad Hazlett, Natasha Quadlin
Abraham Calderon
Areas of Specialization: Race and Ethnicity, Leftist Movements, Social Inequality, Social Change, International Migration
Dissertation Title: Cultural Struggle Along the Radical Flank: interrogating contemporary socialist organizing in the United States
Advisors: Vilma Ortiz (UCLA), Dylan Rodriguez (UCR), Marcus Hunter (UCLA), Aliza Luft (UCLA)
Molly Fee
Website: https://soc.ucla.edu/grads/molly-fee
Areas of Specialization: International Migration, Political Sociology, Forced Migration, Refugee Resettlement
Dissertation Title: Resettling Refugees: Social Rights and Incorporation in San Diego, CA and Boise, ID
Advisors: Waldinger (chair), Kligman, Walker, and David FitzGerald (external member)
Ian Gray
Website: ianpgray.com
Areas of Specialization: Economic sociology, science and technology studies, environmental politics, organizations, culture, ethnography
Dissertation Title: Making Climate Knowledge Actionable: Risk, Uncertainty, and the Politics of Protection in a Warming World
Advisors: Stefan Timmermans (co-chair), Ed Walker (co-chair), Hannah Landecker, Ted Porter (History)
Zach Griffen
Website: zachgriffen.com
Areas of Specialization: Economic Sociology; Sociology of Knowledge, Science, and Expertise; Cultural Sociology; Comparative Historical Sociology; Social Policy; Sociology of Education; Sociology of Health; Society and Genetics
Dissertation Title: Economizing the Social, or Socializing Economics? Economic Expertise and Social Policy in Education and Healthcare
Advisors: Aaron Panofsky (co-chair), Hannah Landecker (co-chair), Stefan Timmermans, Theodore M. Porter (History), Elizabeth Popp Berman (Organizational Studies, University of Michigan)
Andrew Christopher Herman
Areas of Specialization: Economic Sociology, Political Sociology, STS, Science of Science, Comparative/Historical Sociology, Computational Social Sciences
Dissertation Title: Sunny with a chance of traffic: Weather forecasting, smart highways, and how governments affect innovation
Advisors: Rebecca Jean Emigh (chair), Jacob G. Foster, Ka-Yuet Liu, Stefan Bargheer (Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies), Emmanuel Didier (Centre Maurice Halbwachs)
Joel Herrera
Areas of Specialization: Political Sociology, Development, Comparative-historical Sociology
Dissertation Title: State Building and Drug Trafficking in Post-revolutionary Mexico
Advisor: Cesar Ayala
MJ Hill
Website: https://www.mjhill.net/
Areas of Specialization: Gender; social categories; qualitative methods; sociology of knowledge; social interaction; ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA)
Dissertation Title: “Knowing Gender, Making Gender: Gendered meaning-making and the production of social order”
Advisors: Steven Clayman (chair), John Heritage, Jeff Guhin, Kevin A. Whitehead (UC Santa Barbara), S Crawley (U of South Florida)
Zep Kalb
Areas of specialization: Political Sociology, Social Movements, Labor, International Development, Comparative-Historical Sociology
Dissertation title: The Backbone of the Islamic Republic: Workers and the Politics of Labor in Iran.
Advisors: Edward Walker, Kevan Harris, Ching Kwan Lee, Chris Tilly
Harleen Kaur
Website: kaurharleen.com
Areas of Specialization: Racism, Nationalism, Empire, Religion, Postcolonial Studies, Identity, Memory, Qualitative Methods
Dissertation Title: Crossroads of Belonging, Safety, and Sovereignty: Sikh Punjabi Negotiations of Statecraft and Racecraft from Colonial Punjab to Imperial United States
Advisors: Karida Brown (Chair), Marcus Anthony Hunter, Cecilia Menjívar, Thu-Huong Nguyen-Vo, & Rupa Marya
Amanda McArthur
Areas of Specialization: Medical Sociology, Talk & Interaction in Medicine, Sociology of Diagnosis, Conversation Analysis, Mixed Methods
Dissertation Title: Resisting the Diagnosis: Medical Authority and the Problem of Legitimacy in US Primary Care
Advisors: Heritage (Chair), Stivers, Timmermans, Bird (RAND Health)
Josefina Flores Morales
Website: https://josefinafloresmorales.com/
Areas of Specialization: Latinx sociology; health; social demography; inequality; aging; mortality; life course.
Dissertation Title: Excluded for a Lifetime?: Three Essays on Immigration Status and Health in Childhood, Adulthood, and Older Age
Advisors: Dr. Vilma Ortiz; Dr. Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez; Dr. Ka-Yuet Liu; Dr. Andrés Villarreal
Kyle Nelson
Website: https://soc.ucla.edu/grads/kyle-nelson
Areas of Specialization: Urban Sociology, Law and Society, Eviction and Housing Policy, and Ethnographic Methods.
Dissertation Title: Litigating the Housing Crisis: Legal Assistance and the Institutional Life of Eviction in Los Angeles
Advisors: Rebecca Jean Emigh (co-chair), Stefan Timmermans (co-chair), Marcus Anthony Hunter, and Michael C. Lens (Urban Planning)
Tala Oszkay
Areas of Specialization: Social Movements, Organizations, Local Politics and Policymaking, Economic Development, Mixed Methods Personal Website
Dissertation Title: Contentions with Sharing: The Local Structures and Politics of a Developing Short-Term Rental Market
Advisors: Edward T. Walker (Chair), Rebecca J. Emigh, Jacob Foster, Paavo Monkkonen (Urban Planning and Public Policy)
Pei Palmgren
Website: https://www.peipalmgren.com
Areas of specialization: Political sociology, international migration, development, global and transnational sociology, Southeast Asia, comparative ethnography and qualitative methods
Dissertation Title: Remaking regimes of labor migration: development, governance, and social reproduction in Thailand
Advisors: Ching Kwan Lee (Chair), Roger Waldinger, Ruben Hernandez-Leon, Eric Sheppard (UCLA Geography)
Anthony James Williams
Areas of Specialization: Race, racism, and ethnicity; prisons and punishment; urban sociology; qualitative methods
Dissertation Title: Us & Them: How California State Prisons Justify Solitary Confinement
Advisors: Marcus Anthony Hunter (chair), Cecilia Menjivar, Kelly Lytle Hernandez, and Karida Brown
