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
Nathan I. Hoffmann
Website: https://nathanhoffmann.com/
Areas of Specialization: International migration, education, sexuality, and quantitative methods
Dissertation Title: Essays on Young Migrants’ Academic Achievement
Advisors: Roger Waldinger (chair), Jennie Brand, Chad Hazlett, Andrés Villarreal
Oscar Contreras
Areas of Specialization: Machine Learning, Social Network Analysis, Social Statistics, Computational Social Science, Organized Crime, Migration, US-Mexico Region.
Dissertation Title: Essays on Computational Methods and Organized Crime.
Advisors: Ruben Hernandez-Leon (co-chair), Gabriel Rossman (co-chair), Andres Villareal, David Shirk.
Gabriel L. Suchodolski
Areas of Specialization: Political Sociology, Development & Social Change, Comparative Historical Sociology, Ethnography, Environment & Land, Policy Analysis, Global South
Dissertation Title: Grounds for Development: Land Policy and Politics in Amazonia
Advisors: Rebecca Emigh (Co-chair), Kevan Harris (Co-chair), Susanna Hecht (Urban Planning and Geography), Akhil Gupta (Anthropology), Edward Walker
Nicholas V. DiRago
Website : https://dirago.me/
Areas of Specialization: Urban sociology, organizations, neighborhood inequality, spatial methods
Dissertation Title: Studies of Organizations, Space, and Urban Inequality
Advisors: Edward T. Walker (chair), Jennie E. Brand, Ann Owens (University of Southern California), Min Zhou
Oscar J. Mayorga
Specialization: Race & Ethnicity, Quantitative and Computational Methods
Dissertation: Reconceptualizing Colorblindness: A Racecraft Approach
Dissertation Committee:
Prof. Vilma Ortiz, Chair, Department of Sociology at UCLA
Prof. Ka-Yuet Liu, committee member, Department of Sociology at UCLA
Prof. Jennie Brand, committee member, Department of Sociology and Statistics at UCLA
Prof. Dylan Rodriguez, external committee member, Department of Media and Cultural Studies at University of California – Riverside
Allison Ramirez Madia
Areas of Specialization: Settler Colonialism, Race & Indigeneity, Environment, Economy, Comparative-Historical Sociology, and Ethnography
Dissertation Title: Transforming the Tohono: Water Management, the Tohono O’odham Nation, and American Colonialism
Advisors: Vilma Ortiz (co-chair), Jessica Cattelino (co-chair), Rubén Hernández-León, and Aradhna Tripati
Angela Clague
Areas of Specialization: Gender Stratification, Organizations and Work, Family and Domestic Labor, Demography, Computational Methods, In-depth Interviews.
Dissertation Title: The Balancing Act: A Mixed-Method Study of Working Mothers and Gendered Labor at Home
Advisors: Megan Sweeney (Co-Chair), Abigail Saguy (Co-Chair), Wei-hsin Yu, Patrick Heuveline, Nelson Lim, Chaitra Hardison
