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Maria Abascal
New York University
Visiting Scholar
2021 to 2022
Abascal will explore different definitions of racial and ethnic diversity and examine how recent demographic changes affect Americans’ efforts at cooperation in their communities, including how Americans address conflict. Abascal’s research will use multiple methods and data sources, including survey and administrative data as well as an original experiment, to develop new tools that measure both diversity and its impacts.
Julia Adams
University of Michigan
Visiting Scholar
2002 to 2003
Julia Adams, associate professor of sociology and the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan, will write a book on colonial governance in the East Indies between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. She will focus on the role of imperial intermediaries, the rulers' colonial representatives, during the first great wave of European empire in the East Indies. How and when did Europe's first "men in the Indies" come to assert their status as increasingly autonomous colonial rulers?
Richard D. Alba
City University of New York Graduate Center
Visiting Scholar
2014 to 2015
Alba will write a series of articles about the demographic transformation of working-age Americans and its impact on the ethnic and racial composition of the upper tiers of the workforce. The project will evaluate the nature and significance of the growing diversity in top-tier occupations such as finance.
Richard D. Alba
State University of New York, Albany
Visiting Scholar
1998 to 1999
Richard D. Alba, professor of sociology and public policy at the State University of New York, Albany, will compare the adaptation of second and third generation immigrants in the United States, France, Germany, and Great Britain. In the years following World War II, varying political ideologies, economic opportunities, and citizenship laws within each nation set distinct boundaries for newcomers.
Sigal Alon
Tel Aviv University
Visiting Scholar
2012 to 2013
Alon will write a book evaluating class-based affirmative action. Using data from the United States, four Israeli universities, and simulated models, Alon will compare race- and class-based affirmative action policies and assess their effects on diversity and on the socioeconomic mobility of disadvantaged groups.
Edwin Amenta
University of California, Irvine
Visiting Scholar
2018 to 2019
Amenta and Francesca Polletta will study the ways in which social movements have transformed culture and everyday life. Drawing from interviews, public polls, and media coverage of social movements such as the civil rights movement, gay and lesbian activism, movements around abortion, and anti-tax and anti-welfare movements, they will examine movements’ impact on public opinion, institutions such as medicine and higher education, and the cultural assumptions guiding policymakers.
Edwin Amenta
New York University
Visiting Scholar
2000 to 2001
Edwin Amenta, associate professor of sociology at New York University, will study radical movements of the 1930s, such as the Townsend Movement, which proposed cash benefits for workers willing to retire in order to open up jobs for younger workers. Amenta will develop a general framework for analyzing the impact of social movements that seek to influence government policy.
Kenneth T. Andrews
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
Kenneth T. Andrews, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will write a book on local and state environmental groups and the social, political, and economic factors that influence them. Combining qualitative and quantitative strategies, Andrews will interview environmental groups and examine media coverage on environmental matters to determine the exact role played by these groups in both public debates and state action.
Sofya Aptekar
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Visiting Scholar
2019 to 2020
Aptekar and Amy Hsin will examine the extent to which lack of legal status affects the lives of undocumented youth attending colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Drawing from administrative data and interviews with students, they will study differences in educational and employment trajectories, family dynamics, and other outcomes among undocumented youth from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia.
Amada Armenta
University of California, Los Angeles
Visiting Scholar
2021 to 2022
Armenta will work on a book analyzing the experiences of undocumented Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia. She will focus on immigrants’ legal attitudes across various domains, focusing on how immigrants understand and make decisions about migration, driving, working, calling the police, securing identification, and paying taxes.
James Bachmeier
Temple University
Visiting Scholar
2021 to 2022
Bachmeier and Jennifer Van Hook will co-author a book about whether the U.S. can successfully integrate diverse waves of newcomers. They will incorporate findings from a previous RSF-funded project in which they used census data to track immigrant integration based on educational attainment and other outcomes across three generations.
Delia S. Baldassarri
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
2011 to 2012
Baldassarri will write a book that accounts for trends in American public opinion over the last forty years and relates changes in political preferences to the social identities and networks in which individuals are embedded. She will explain how people deal with conflicting political views and polarized social networks, as well as assess whether the increased partisanship has moved the United States further away from the ideal of political pluralism and favored the systematic under-representation of certain groups.
Carolyn Barnes
University of Chicago
Visiting Scholar
2023 to 2024
Barnes will draw on interviews with 180 workers and 400 beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and Medicaid to investigate barriers to accessing, maintaining, and using social safety net programs. She will also explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affected access to these programs.
Frank D. Bean
University of California, Irvine
Visiting Scholar
2002 to 2003
Frank Bean, professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, will analyze census data used in a Foundation-supported study of racial identification. According to data released last spring, 2.4 percent of the U.S. population identified itself as multiracial in the 2000 census - the first to allow Americans to select "one or more races" to indicate their racial identification.
Pamela R. Bennett
Queens College, City University of New York
Visiting Scholar
2012 to 2013
Bennett and Amy Lutz will write a book that examines the different ways parents approach their children’s education. They will explore the sources of variation in parenting styles across class, race/ethnicity, and immigrant generations. They will draw on survey data, in-depth qualitative interviews, and academic data to analyze dynamics within families, schools, neighborhoods and to better understand the roots of social behavior.
Adam Berinsky
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Visiting Scholar
2023 to 2024
Berinsky will explore how a person’s mode of perceiving, thinking, and problem solving relates to belief in misinformation. He will conduct experiments to develop behavioral interventions that encourage the use of deliberative and analytical thinking when engaging with information online.
Annette D. Bernhardt
National Employment Law Project
Visiting Scholar
2011 to 2012
Bernhardt will write a series of articles based on findings from the RSF-funded "Unregulated Work Survey" on the violation of minimum wage, overtime, and other laws by employers. She will analyze the prevalence of workplace violations in several overlooked areas of the low-wage labor market, including unregulated, nonstandard, and informal jobs. Bernhardt will examine the causes of variation in workplace violations across industries and the underreporting of undocumented low-wage workers in government surveys.
Max Besbris
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Visiting Scholar
2020 to 2021
Drawing on an RSF-funded longitudinal study of flooded households in a suburban town severely affected by Hurricane Harvey, Besbris will work on a book examining how the victims of climate-related disasters decide whether or not to return to their homes, how to reinvest in their property, and the sources of financial and social support they receive during recovery. His focus is on middle-class households and how their past residential stability affects their perceptions of risk.
Suzanne M. Bianchi
University of California, Los Angeles
Visiting Scholar
2010 to 2011
Bianchi is part of an interdisciplinary working group (with Judith Seltzer and Joseph Hotz), which will assess three primary pathways through which families may transmit advantage or disadvantage to subsequent generations: genes and biology, economic resources and skills, and social ties and family obligations. Suzanne Bianchi and Judith Seltzer will complete their book, Family Relationships Across the Generations.
Amy Binder
University of California, San Diego
Visiting Scholar
2005 to 2006
Amy Binder, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, will explore the ways in which not-for-profit groups act as intermediaries to help needy individuals locate and access social services. She will focus on a transitional housing facility in Colorado and write a book on the ways the facility betters the lives of its clients by connecting them to educational resources.