Search Fellows
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Robert J. Sampson
Harvard University
Visiting Scholar
2010 to 2011
Sampson will write a book and several articles that advance three interrelated projects examining how the structure of communities, especially leadership, influences community trust and functioning; how living in or near mixed-income communities is related to individual outcomes, such as economic well-being; and how participation in civic activities has changed over time.
Diana T. Sanchez
Rutgers University
Visiting Scholar
2009 to 2010
Diana T. Sanchez, assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University, will conduct a study exploring how specific ethnic markers influence ethnic minorities’ self-perceptions and the perceptions of others in contexts for which minority status is an advantage or disadvantage. Sanchez will also examine whether discovered patterns hold for evaluations of both men and women and by minority and white perceivers.
Rebecca Sandefur
Arizona State University
Visiting Scholar
2019 to 2020
Sandefur will explore the role of the civil justice system in exacerbating social inequality. Using survey and administrative data and interviews, she will investigate the prevalence and impact of civil justice problems, such as discrimination, debt, and renters’ issues. She will study how individuals think about civil justice problems, including why they do or do not pursue legal action. She will also examine how access to the civil justice system differs by race and socioeconomic status, and evaluate interventions designed to ameliorate civil justice problems and reduce inequality.
Aliya Saperstein
Stanford University
Visiting Scholar
2014 to 2015
Saperstein will write a book on how changes in racial status are related to changes in social status. The book builds on her research on the fluidity of racial perceptions, including analyses of how people self-identify racially, how they are classified by others, and how conceptions of race shift both within and across generations. She finds that these micro-level changes carry significant implications for the persistence of racial inequality.
Natalia Sarkisian
Boston College
Visiting Scholar
2011 to 2012
Sarkisian will write a book examining how social class and race shape kin support in the United States. Sarkisian will focus on whether poverty boosts or weakens kin ties by examining three central questions: How do economic resources affect individuals’ ties to extended families? What mechanisms link economic disadvantage to kin support? Does giving and receiving kin support help or hinder economic mobility?
Ronald Schettkat
Utrecht University
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
Ronald Schettkat, professor of economics at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, will compare the amount of time Americans and Germans spend at their jobs and on household activities. Schettkat shows that although Americans spend more hours at their jobs than Germans, they spend less time on household production, which includes childcare, housework, and meal preparation.
Mark Schneider
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Visiting Scholar
1997 to 1998
Mark Schneider, professor and chair of the department of political science, State University of New York at Stony Brook, wrote a book on how increasing freedom of choice affects parents' pursuit of educational alternatives for their children. Schneider evaluated both sides of the school choice argument, examining whether greater choice benefits society by prompting parents to become informed consumers, or whether it increases segregation along racial and class lines.
Heather Schoenfeld
Boston University
Visiting Scholar
2025 to 2026
Schoenfeld and Michael Campbell will examine factors that influenced states to reduce their prison populations in the first decade of the 21st century by investigating differences in prison reform activity across states. They will analyze the obstacles confronting reformers and the strategies they employed to overcome some of these challenges. Their research will consist of comparative case studies of six states: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, and Florida.
Andrew Schotter
New York University
Visiting Scholar
1999 to 2000
Andrew Schotter, professor of economics at New York University, will study how norms of behavior are created and passed on from generation to generation. Schotter will approach the problem through experimental game theory: players come and go, but games can continue indefinitely, presenting successive generations of players with the same strategic choices. People may respond by blindly following the conventions handed down to them by their predecessors.
Lyle A. Scruggs
University of Connecticut
Visiting Scholar
2012 to 2013
Scruggs will write a book that examines the historical evolution of social welfare programs around the world and in the U.S. between 1970 and the present. He will assess whether social policy provisions are becoming less generous in richer democracies or in American states, and investigate the role of structural, institutional, and political factors to explain differences in the comparative generosity of the welfare state.
Robert L. Selman
Harvard University
Visiting Scholar
1999 to 2000
Robert L. Selman, professor of education and psychology at Harvard University, will write a book based on his studies of the way young people growing up under difficult life circumstances (such as dysfunctional families, neighborhood poverty, and social prejudice) learn how to relate to others. Selman defines the essence of "social competence" as the ability to coordinate one's own perspective with that of others, through mutual understanding and negotiation.
Judith A. Seltzer
University of California, Los Angeles
Visiting Scholar
2010 to 2011
Seltzer is part of an interdisciplinary working group (with Suzanne Bianchi 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.
Lisa J. Servon
New School
Visiting Scholar
2015 to 2016
Servon will draw from several years of original research to write a book examining the connections between widespread financial insecurity and the consumer financial services industry. She will investigate the interconnectedness between the three components of the consumer financial services industry—mainstream, alternative, and informal—and illustrate how policy has been made without a full understanding of how people move among these three components.
Carrie L. Shandra
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Visiting Scholar
2018 to 2019
Shandra will undertake a comprehensive study of internships, which are now a common employment experience for younger workers. Drawing from surveys, interviews, and a longitudinal dataset of online job and internship postings, she will provide a descriptive account of the internship market. She will examine employers’ perspectives and practices on internships, study which groups are more likely to take internships and what kinds of internships they select, and evaluate interns’ labor market outcomes.
Robert Shapiro
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2006 to 2007
Robert Shapiro, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, will use self-reported data on political ideology and party affiliation to examine the extent to which public opinion in the United States has split along party lines. He will go beyond previous studies to analyze public opinion data from 2006 and to assess the relationship between partisanship and ideological beliefs with respect to foreign policy issues.
Lesley A. Sharp
Barnard College
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
Lesley A. Sharp, associate professor of anthropology at Barnard College, will write a book about organ donation that examines the history and changing terms of social acceptance for transplant technology. Organ transplantation is considered one of the greatest medical miracles of the 20th century, yet Sharp's data reveal significant public distrust of the process.
Carla Shedd
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2010 to 2011
Shedd will write journal-length articles comparing how adolescents are socialized regarding the law and how they perceive injustice. She will compare the experiences of Latino youth to other racial and ethnic groups, anticipating that increased racial diversity in schools may result in a significant increase in perceptions of injustice.
J. Nicole Shelton
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
2002 to 2003
J. Nicole Shelton, assistant professor of psychology at Princeton University, will work on three related studies concerning intergroup contact between blacks and whites. She will analyze data from an RSF-supported study on the role of racial identity and discrimination among African-American and white college students in order to examine the phenomenon of "discrimination anxiety" -- blacks' concern that they will be rejected because of their race, as well as whites' concern that they will appear prejudiced.
David Sherman
University of California, Santa Barbara
Visiting Scholar
2024 to 2025
Sherman will explore the psychology of environmental decision making and support for policies addressing climate change. He will include insights from climate researchers, members of Congress, and climate activists to examine the systemic psychological and structural barriers that prevent political agreement on climate policy in the U.S. among individuals and policy makers.
Elizabeth Shermer
Loyola University Chicago
Visiting Scholar
2014 to 2015
Shermer will complete a book that examines the origins of the contemporary crisis in public higher education. She hypothesizes that contrary to popular belief, state universities have always been subject to market forces. Shermer finds that there was never enough government funding to create a geographically-uniform system of mass higher education, and that as a result, public universities have long been influenced by private sector interests.