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Katherine Newman
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
1995 to 1996
Katherine S. Newman, professor of anthropology at Columbia University, and Carol B. Stack, professor, Graduate School of Education and Women's Studies, University of California, Berkeley, jointly worked on their project "Why Work?", an investigation of the role of minimum wage jobs in the survival of poverty-level families living in two major urban ghettos, New York City's Harlem and Oakland, California.
Mae Ngai
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2020 to 2021
Ngai will write an intellectual and political history of the American liberal narrative of immigrant integration. She will examine how immigration history was written after World War II and how that narrative helped both to secure immigration reform in the 1960s and established an enduring framework for how Americans think about immigration and assimilation.
Richard E. Nisbett
University of Michigan
Visiting Scholar
2008 to 2009
William T. Dickens, Professor, Northeastern University, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, James R. Flynn, Emeritus Professor at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and Richard E. Nisbett, Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, will form a working group to develop a multi-level model of intelligence that explains the role of genes and physiology along with the role of environment in making individuals intellectually able..
Richard E. Nisbett
University of Michigan
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
Richard E. Nisbett, Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, will spend the fall semester at Russell Sage working on projects that extend his research on the cognitive differences between the holistic styles of thought characteristic of East Asian cultures and the analytic styles prevalent in the West. Nisbett believes that social systems play an important role in cognition and that collectivist societies yield a more holistic way of thought while more individualistic societies encourage categorical thought.
Alice O'Connor
University of California, Santa Barbara
Visiting Scholar
1995 to 1996
Alice B. O'Connor, assistant professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, completed a book on the development of poverty research as a social science in the United States. Her book examines the field's historical origins and its contemporary issues, methods, and practitioners, and most importantly will assess the role of poverty research in shaping public policy and welfare reform. O'Connor also explored the political and bureaucratic pressures that have intensified the need for poverty expertise.
Sharyn O'Halloran
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
Sharyn O'Halloran, associate professor of political science and international affairs at Columbia University, and David Epstein, associate professor of political science at Columbia University, will write a book that analyzes the impact of race-based districting on racial representation in Congress and on public policy. Epstein and O'Halloran will explore how districting strategies impact the ability of minority groups to affect the passage of legislation at both the national and state levels.
Barry O'Neill
University of California, Los Angeles
Visiting Scholar
2005 to 2006
Barry O’Neill, Professor of Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles, will conduct research on how public apologies can be used to resolve conflict and promote reconciliation between states or groups. He will discuss strategic dilemmas in apologizing, assess the importance of symbolism in apologies, and study apology patterns in different cultures. For the project, he will assemble a systematic database of international apologies that will discuss how and why they were made, and how they were received.
Dina Okamoto
University of California, Davis
Visiting Scholar
2004 to 2005
Dina Okamoto, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis, will work on a book examining how residential and occupational segregation have facilitated the formation of a common identity among U.S. immigrants from different Asian countries.
Dina Okamoto
Indiana University
Visiting Scholar
2017 to 2018
Okamoto and Linda Tropp will explore immigrant-native relations based on a telephone survey of 2,000 residents of Atlanta and Philadelphia and in-depth interviews with 250 of the survey respondents.
J. Eric Oliver
University of Chicago
Visiting Scholar
2002 to 2003
J. Eric Oliver, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, will write a book on the impact of multiracial segregation on American democracy. New waves of immigration from Asia and Latin America are forcing the United States to contend with the competing claims of a range of racial and ethnic groups. Yet even as the nation moves toward this multiracial plurality, most racial and ethnic groups continue to lead highly segregated lives.
Melvin L. Oliver
University of California, Santa Barbara
Visiting Scholar
1995 to 1996
Melvin L. Oliver, professor of policy studies at the School of Public Policy and Social Research, University of California, Los Angeles spent a brief period at the Foundation analyzing data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality prior to taking up a new post at the Ford Foundation. His primary interest is to understand the reasons for the sharp increases in both well-to-do blacks and those living in poverty.
Karl-Dieter Opp
University of Leipzig
Visiting Scholar
1996 to 1997
Karl-Dieter Opp, professor of sociology at the University of Leipzig, drafted several chapters of a book that he is writing with Steven Finkel of the University of Virginia in which they will set forth a dynamic theory of collective political action--the conditions under which protest behavior either escalates or diminishes. They will test their propositions using two sets of data, a study of collective political action in West Germany and surveys taken of citizens of Leipzig, the city where protests against the East German communist regime began.
Michael Oppenheimer
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
2005 to 2006
Michael Oppenheimer, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University, will write a book on how science affects public policy. He will discuss how non-governmental organizations mediate between scientists and policy-makers, and how this process shapes policy on technical issues. The book will focus on climate change, and how non-governmental organizations helped popularize a system of tradable pollution permits as a way to control acid rain and greenhouse gases
Philip Oreopoulos
University of Toronto
Visiting Scholar
2018 to 2019
Oreopolous will evaluate behavioral interventions designed to increase academic achievement among low-performing students at postsecondary institutions. He will synthesize results from four years of field experiments to identify which students struggle in college, what specific challenges they face, and whether technological aids such as online goal-setting exercises, text message reminders, or electronic calendars can generate meaningful and scalable programs to boost academic success.
Ann Orloff
Northwestern University
Visiting Scholar
2006 to 2007
Ann Orloff, Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University, will write a book examining the relationship between the welfare reform movement and changing beliefs about the role of women in families and the economy. She will examine the ways in which American public policy shows little regard for full-time caregivers and the consequences of the contemporary “employment for all” attitude on women’s welfare.
Working Paper
Francesc Ortega
City University of New York
Visiting Scholar
2025 to 2026
Ortega will examine how recent reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program have impacted disadvantaged communities in flood-prone areas. He will also analyze administrative data on flood insurance policies and the American Community Survey to evaluate additional reforms, such as extending insurance mandates.
Paul Osterman
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Visiting Scholar
2014 to 2015
Osterman will examine strategies for improving job quality in the low-wage labor market through encouraging employers to improve their human resource policies. In order to aid the development of policies that lead to better wages and benefits in the private sector, he will analyze the conditions that incentivize firms to improve their employment practices. He will focus on the health care and manufacturing industries.
Julia Cathleen Ott
The New School
Visiting Scholar
2009 to 2010
Julia Cathleen Ott, assistant professor in the history of capitalism at Eugene Lang College and the Graduate Faculty of the New School University, will write a book on the origins of the concept of “democratic investing” in America from 1890-1932.
Elaine Pagels
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
2006 to 2007
Elaine Pagels, Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University, will write a book that will place the New Testament Book of Revelation in its first century historical context and explore its enduring cultural influence. She will examine how the early Christian movement in Rome was an early example of a conscious effort to separate religion and politics, a phenomenon which, she argues, has been extremely rare throughout all but our most recent cultural history.