Search Fellows
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Gwyneth McClendon
New York University
Visiting Scholar
2021 to 2022
McClendon will draw on psychology and neuroscience research to analyze how political movements invite people and communities to reimagine political structures. Focusing on social movements in the United States and South Africa, McClendon’s project will include both analysis of digital communications and a series of online experiments. The project will demonstrate how social movements that aim to reduce inequality stimulate the public’s imagination and to what effect.
Monica McDermott
Arizona State University
Visiting Scholar
2019 to 2020
McDermott and Eric Knowles (in collaboration with Jennifer Richeson) will study the attitudes and beliefs of white working-class individuals toward racial minorities and the changing demographics of the U.S. Through laboratory and survey experiments and interviews, they will analyze the conditions that generate both positive and negative perceptions of racial minorities by low-income whites.
Adam McKeown
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2004 to 2005
Adam McKeown, Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University, will complete a book analyzing the historical roots of the modern system of immigrant documentation, such as identity cards, visas, and passports. McKeown argues that these controls evolved and were developed in the process of regulating migration from Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Kathleen R. McNamara
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
1999 to 2000
Kathleen R. McNamara, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, will study the politics of globalization in the context of tax and spending policies in the European Union. What limits and demands have the increasingly integrated E.U. markets placed on fiscal policymaking within each member state? Will fiscal policymaking, at present the province of elected officials, become as removed from electoral accountability as the monetary policy of the independent central bank? Does market integration always lead to convergence in policies?
Tracey Meares
Yale University
Visiting Scholar
2023 to 2024
Meares (together with Benjamin Justice) will co-author a book on how experiences with criminal legal institutions shape one’s civic identity. Drawing on scholarship from law, history, and the social sciences, they will examine how legally innocent people encounter three phases of the “curriculum” of American justice: policing, pretrial detention, and adjudication.
Ajay Mehrotra
Northwestern University and American Bar Foundation
Visiting Scholar
2025 to 2026
Mehrotra will examine why the U.S. has historically resisted a broad-based national consumption tax, such as a value-added tax (VAT), and what that resistance reveals about inequality. His historical analysis of tax policy will investigate the role of fiscal experts in advancing or inhibiting a consumption tax, how different political interests have exerted power over the lawmaking process to support or oppose such taxes, and how historical events have created obstacles for supporters of a national consumption tax.
Susan Turner Meiklejohn
Hunter College, City University of New York
Visiting Scholar
2007 to 2008
Susan Turner Meiklejohn, Associate Professor of Urban Planning at Hunter College, will write a book assessing the relationship between inter-ethnic friendships among young people in Sunnyside, Queens – one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the world – and their subsequent cultural and political development. Based on 120 face-to-face interviews with young adults and their parents, Meiklejohn’s book will explore issues of racial identity, segregation, and community participation.
Barbara Mellers
University of California, Berkeley
Visiting Scholar
2005 to 2006
Barbara Mellers, Milton W. Terrill Chair and Professor of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley, will work on research projects related to the influence of emotion on decision making. She will work to develop a theoretical framework to understand why some people are more cooperative than others, and consider the consequences of her theories for behavioral economics and public policy. She will also study the ways in which expectations affect the experience of losses or gains, and the policy implications of human errors in jury decision making.
Rachel Meltzer
Harvard University
Visiting Scholar
2026 to 2027
Meltzer will consider the physical and economic transformations in neighborhoods caused by extreme climate events. She will examine the physical disrepair and reinvestment in housing and the ensuing population changes in neighborhoods hit hard by Hurricanes Sandy and Harvey in New York City and Harris County.
Tali Mendelberg
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
2015 to 2016
Mendelberg will conduct an in-depth analysis of the consequences of affluence on American college campuses, looking at how concentrations of high-income students at universities may reinforce economic inequality. She will explore whether the presence of many affluent students creates social norms on campuses that prioritize the wealthy and marginalize low-income students, thereby leading to lower rates of leadership and future political participation among low-income young adults.
Tali Mendelberg
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
2026 to 2027
Mendelberg will study public opinion about affordable housing in the U.S. She will examine the paradox that while many Americans say they want government to improve housing affordability, proposals for affordable housing often encounter public resistance. Using original surveys with novel measures, her early analyses find wide support for affordable housing, but only when it primarily benefits people of low and modest means and does not primarily benefit developers, investors and landlords.
Suzanne Mettler
Cornell University
Visiting Scholar
2026 to 2027
Mettler will investigate the place-based components of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, as well as more recent policy changes affecting rural areas, in order to understand the conditions under which policy changes can mitigate placed-based social and economic inequality and the political polarization that now accompanies it. Given the rural-urban divide, can public policies that target disadvantaged rural places, aiming to promote economic development, generate supportive constituencies that act politically to sustain them?
Ilan Meyer
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2006 to 2007
Ilan Meyer, Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, will write a book on health in minority communities which will explore the role of stigma, prejudice, and discrimination in causing health disparities between groups. He will argue that such social stressors can lead to adverse mental and physical health outcomes for minorities, but that social support from other group members and the community at large can ameliorate some of these effects.
Ruth Milkman
University of California, Los Angeles
Visiting Scholar
2004 to 2005
Ruth Milkman, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, will write a book about the labor market in Los Angeles, arguing that "low road" strategies by employers to reduce wages and undermine unions have been the driving force in restructuring labor markets. Further, she will argue that the trend towards shifting work to low-wage immigrants was a product and not a cause of that restructuring.
Ruth Milkman
City University of New York
Visiting Scholar
2025 to 2026
Milkman and Heidi Gottfried will examine the complexities of the fast-growing U.S. home care labor market. They will compare formal employment in the Medicaid-funded market segment, formal employment in the privately paid segment, and the 'gray market,' in which clients hire home care workers through informal networks and pay them directly. The project draws on original interviews and survey data collected by Milkman and Gottfried.
Pyong Gap Min
Queens College, City University of New York
Visiting Scholar
2006 to 2007
Pyong Gap Min, Professor of Sociology at Queens College and Graduate Center, CUNY, will write a book examining how the involvement of immigrants in ethnic businesses affects ethnic attachment, solidarity, and conflict. Focusing on Chinese, Indian, and Korean immigrants in New York City, he will use survey data, interviews with community leaders, and a review of ethnic newspapers to see how different levels of involvement with businesses in an ethnic enclave shape the cultural, social, and psychological integration of the group.
Ronald B. Mincy
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2015 to 2016
In collaboration with Natasha J. Cabrera, Mincy will examine the connections between low-income fathers’ earnings and financial support and their children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes. Using several waves of data from the Fragile Families Study, Cabrera and Mincy will explore how the associations between fathers’ earnings and children’s skills are affected by factors such as race, maternal stress, parental engagement, and child care quality.
John H. Mollenkopf
City University of New York
Visiting Scholar
2000 to 2001
Philip Kasinitz and John Mollenkopf, professors of sociology and political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will analyze the findings of a major study of the new second generation of immigrants in metropolitan New York, which they are directing with Professor Mary Waters of Harvard University.
Harvey Molotch
New York University
Visiting Scholar
2008 to 2009
Harvey Molotch, Professor of Sociology at New York University, will complete a project exploring how New York City subway workers sense and respond to threat, and the corresponding implications for sociological questions of surveillance. Though their work is not formally related to security, these employees are the “first responders” to a large number of social safety issues.
Mignon Moore
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2004 to 2005
Mignon Moore, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, will author a book that examines the identities of black and Latina lesbian women, looking at their attitudes about relationships, family formation, sexuality, and parenting. Based on two years of interviews, surveys, and participant observations in social environments, Moore argues that race, ethnicity, and cultural experience converge to form an identity and outlook on relationships for lesbian women of color that is distinct from both heterosexual minority women and white lesbians.