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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.
Lauren Valentino
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Visiting Scholar
2026 to 2027
Valentino will work on a book examining how ordinary Americans define discrimination and why those definitions matter. Drawing on original mixed-methods data, including 40 in-depth interviews and two nationally representative survey experiments, Valentino analyzes how people decide what "counts" as racism, sexism, and classism. Rather than treating disagreement as a matter of individual sensitivity, she identifies patterns in symbolic boundaries around discrimination definitions, and how they are shaped by social location, lived experience, and political orientation.
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.
Adam Waytz
Northwestern University
Visiting Scholar
2018 to 2019
Waytz will research the extent to which automation—or the replacement of human tasks with machines—affects people’s perceptions of themselves, others, and work. He will conduct a series of experiments to determine how people evaluate information differently based on whether a machine or human produces that information, whether automated whistleblowing systems can encourage ethical behavior, and whether concerns about automation replacing jobs contribute to anti-immigrant prejudice.
Elke Weber
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2007 to 2008
Eric Johnson (Fall 2007), Norman Eig Professor of Business at Columbia University, and Elke Weber, Jerome A. Chazen Professor of International Business at Columbia University, will spend the fall semester working together on a chapter on “Judgment and Decision Making” for the Annual Review of Psychology, focused on cognitive processes in judgment and choice.