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Karolyn Tyson
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Visiting Scholar
2005 to 2006
Karolyn Tyson, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will combine data from several studies to write a book that examines how school environment and cultural beliefs about education influence student performance, especially among black and low-performing children. Using interviews with students, parents and school staff, as well as ethnographies and test score data, Tyson will construct a theory outlining the developmental trajectory of these disadvantaged students.
Louis Uchitelle
The New York Times
Visiting Scholar
2002 to 2003
Louis Uchitelle, a reporter for The New York Times, will write a book about the history of layoffs since 1995. Over the past twenty years the layoff has become a social norm. Employers engage in the practice as the first line of defense against hard times, and workers have come to accept it as rational practice, even after they are laid off. How did the layoff become so commonplace and acceptable when, as recently as the mid-1990s there was public outrage at mass layoffs?
Edna Ullmann-Margalit
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Visiting Scholar
2004 to 2005
Edna Ullmann-Margalit, Professor of Philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a real world test of her theories on how trust and cooperation can emerge from distrust. She is concerned with the question of whether parties mired in distrust of one another must resort to some external power to mediate their conflict, or if they can overcome distrust on their own.
Miguel Urquiola
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2010 to 2011
Urquiola is part of a working group (with W. Bentley MacLeod), which will examine the structure of educational markets, including how students are matched to schools and whether the use of standardized tests in schools impacts student performance and their potential in the labor market. Separately, W. Bentley MacLeod will analyze the role of different forms of compensation in labor markets and in the growth of inequality.
Jay J. Van Bavel
New York University
Visiting Scholar
2016 to 2017
Van Bavel will analyze the social dynamics that influence implicit intergroup bias. Using large-scale data and a series of experiments, he will investigate how many factors—from the history of slavery to individuals’ brain functions—affect the implicit biases that people hold toward minority groups. He will also explore the extent to which implicit biases can be altered, as well as the role of social institutions in mitigating these biases.
Jennifer Van Hook
Pennsylvania State University
Visiting Scholar
2021 to 2022
Van Hook and James Bachmeier 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.
Colette van Laar
Leiden University
Visiting Scholar
2001 to 2002
Jim Sidanius, professor of psychology and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, Shana Levin, assistant professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College, and Colette van Laar, professor of psychology and education at Leiden University, the Netherlands, will study the impact of the multicultural undergraduate experience on ethnic tolerance and on tensions between different racial and ethnic groups.
Mark J. VanLandingham
Tulane University
Visiting Scholar
2013 to 2014
VanLandingham will explore the sources and limits of resilience within the Vietnamese American community in New Orleans, with a focus on the community’s recovery during the post-Katrina era. He will investigate several factors, including a shared history of overcoming adversity, strong religious institutions, and effective leadership that may have led to a wide range of positive outcomes.
Jessica M. Vasquez
University of Kansas
Visiting Scholar
2011 to 2012
Vasquez will write a book investigating whether and to what extent Latino intermarriage with non-Hispanic whites facilitates the adoption of an “American” identity and integration into the mainstream for both parents and children. Vasquez will also explore the effects of Latino marriages to other racial minorities, and between Latino co-ethnics, on ethnic solidarity, cultural retention, and self-perception.
Katherine Verdery
University of Michigan
Visiting Scholar
2004 to 2005
Gail Kligman, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Katherine Verdery, Eric R. Wolf Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, will conduct a joint study of how a nation’s concept of property as being either private or public influences people’s sense of identity.
Eric Verhoogen
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2018 to 2019
Verhoogen will study the relationship between unionization and technology adoption in U.S. manufacturing. Using data from the National Labor Relations Board, Census surveys, and a new database of collective bargaining contracts, he will compare firms where unions narrowly won representation to firms where they narrowly lost to analyze the extent to which union contracts either encourage or discourage the adoption of new technologies.
Kathleen D. Vohs
University of Minnesota
Visiting Scholar
2013 to 2014
Vohs and Roy F. Baumeister will undertake two separate projects: one which will summarize and integrate the research literature on the “strength model” of self-control; and a second that will investigate the psychological and subjective meaning of money by examining how thought processes, values, and decision-making change when money is involved.
Till von Wachter
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2010 to 2011
Von Wachter will assess the short- and long-term effects of layoffs on individual career outcomes and analyze how layoffs in different industries relate to labor market trends such as earnings inequality, employment stability, and increases in low-wage service employment.
Andrea Voyer
University of Connecticut
Visiting Scholar
2017 to 2018
Voyer will complete a book on the “etiquette of inequality” in democratic spaces, or the everyday behaviors and practices that influence the participation and social inclusion of individuals within civic organizations. She will analyze how participants of different socioeconomic status, race, gender, and immigration status communicate with each other in supposedly egalitarian settings, including a public school, a church, and a community board.
Robert Wade
Brown University
Visiting Scholar
1997 to 1998
Robert Wade, professor of political science and international political economy at Brown University, studied the process by which the World Bank, the world's preeminent development agency, has come to integrate environmental criteria into its standard advice and lending procedures. Wade explored the World Bank's evolving conceptualization of environmental considerations, focusing on the influence of such outside forces as the U.S. Congress, U.S. Treasury, and environmental NGOs.
Jane Waldfogel
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2013 to 2014
Waldfogel along with Bruce Bradbury, Miles Corak, and Elizabeth Washbrook will build upon a current RSF-funded comparative project on educational inequality. This working group will write a book on child development and public policies in four countries. They will analyze differences in school achievement among children of different socioeconomic status in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Hannah Walker
University of Texas at Austin
Visiting Scholar
2023 to 2024
Walker will explore how local police enforcement of federal immigration laws affect Latinx people. She will analyze data from the Immigrant Legal Resources Center, Stanford Open Policing Project, and Transactional Records Access Clearing House to assess how the impact of these programs on Latinx people varies by local police precinct practices and procedures.
Natasha Kumar Warikoo
Harvard University
Visiting Scholar
2013 to 2014
Warikoo will analyze how students at elite universities in the United States and Britain understand merit in admissions. Drawing from 144 in-depth interviews with undergraduates at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford, Warikoo will examine how race and campus experiences, especially institutional supports for inter-cultural contact, shape students’ understanding of diversity and merit.
Dorian T. Warren
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2008 to 2009
Virginia L. Parks, Assistant Professor, School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, and Dorian T. Warren, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, will study grassroots community resistance to “big box” retail stores in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Elizabeth Washbrook
University of Bristol
Visiting Scholar
2013 to 2014
Washbrook along with Bruce Bradbury, Miles Corak, and Jane Waldfogel will build upon a current RSF-funded comparative project on educational inequality. This working group will write a book on child development and public policies in four countries.