Search Fellows
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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.
Abigail Weitzman
University of Texas at Austin
Visiting Scholar
2019 to 2020
Weitzman will investigate how neighborhood violence—homicides in particular—shape pivotal outcomes in the lives of young women. She will link panel survey data and administrative data on local homicides to explore how women’s relationship dynamics, mental health, and college enrollment change with homicides occurring close to their home. She will also study how such exposure to neighborhood violence has consequences for economic and social stratification.
Amy Stuart Wells
University of California, Los Angeles
Visiting Scholar
1999 to 2000
Amy Stuart Wells, associate professor of educational policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, will study a growing, broad-based educational reform movement that seeks to break away from the model of the "common" school -- offering similar and equal educational opportunities to all -- toward greater specialization and privatization, as exemplified by charter schools. Wells contends that charter schools are no more accountable for student outcomes than normal schools and have won greater autonomy from government at the cost of reduced support.
Niels Westergaard-Nielsen
Aarhus School of Business
Visiting Scholar
2007 to 2008
Niels Westergaard-Nielsen, Professor of Economics, Aarhus School of Business, Denmark, will analyze Denmark’s success in helping people escape low-wage work relatively quickly compared to other advanced economies.
Bruce Western
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
1999 to 2000
Bruce Western, associate professor of sociology at Princeton University, will study the impact of the penal system on U.S. labor market inequality among low-wage men since the 1980s. With the inmate population reaching 1.7 million in 1997, incarceration has had a profound impact on the life chances of the disadvantaged, particularly black men. Incarceration bequeaths joblessness, first by removing people from the labor market, second by greatly reducing the employability of ex-convicts reentering the labor market.
Arthur Whaley
University of Texas
Visiting Scholar
2006 to 2007
Arthur Whaley, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, will write a book on the impact of racism on mental health, examining the effects of both interpersonal and societal discrimination on African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. He will explore how social factors such as citizenship, political participation, and economic well-being affect the mental health of minorities, and their ability to cope with racism in America.
Ariel White
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Visiting Scholar
2018 to 2019
White will study why and how unelected government workers who interact with the public at the street level—including police officers, public benefits caseworkers, and teachers—engage in racial and ethnic discrimination. Using administrative data and field and survey experiments, she will investigate the effects of this street-level discrimination on disadvantaged groups and study the extent to which public pressure, such as protests, citizen monitoring, and media campaigns, can reduce discriminatory behavior by government workers.
Morgan Williams, Jr.
Barnard College
Visiting Scholar
2024 to 2025
Williams will examine how municipal residency requirements, which mandate that public sector employees such as law enforcement officers live within the agency’s city limits, affect racial disparities in public safety and policing outcomes. Using novel historical and administrative data, Williams explores the extent to which benefits accrued from these policies, such as improved community relations, may come at the cost of constrained officer recruitment pools and potentially lower-quality policing.
Nathan Wilmers
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Visiting Scholar
2024 to 2025
Wilmers will write a book exploring the extent to which the unexpected decline in inequality over the last decade might lead to lasting wage gains for low-wage workers. Drawing on administrative and survey data, he will examine the extent to which firm composition changes contributed to the decline in inequality and how employers reallocated tasks within low-wage jobs to support higher productivity and higher pay.
Richard Ashby Wilson
University of Connecticut
Visiting Scholar
2017 to 2018
Wilson will develop a framework for identifying the types of political speech that contribute to violence. Drawing from social psychology, anthropology, and three original surveys on hate speech in the U.S. and the Balkans, he will explore the extent to which some forms of speech create greater tolerance of violent behavior. He will then construct a practical matrix which can be used in law and policymaking to evaluate the likelihood that inciting speech will result in violence.
Rick K. Wilson
Rice University
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
Rick K. Wilson, professor of political science at Rice University, will write a book that examines trust, ethnicity, and transitional political and economic systems. Transformations from authoritarian rule over the past 25 years have highlighted the critical role trust plays in shaping both democracy and markets. For his project, Wilson collected data from two regions in the Russian Federation that have waged campaigns for sovereignty and indigenous rights.
Jamie Winders
Syracuse University
Visiting Scholar
2010 to 2011
Winders will write a book on the impact of Latino migration on southern cities, using data from an in-depth ethnographic study in Nashville, Tennessee. Winders will also begin work on a project to develop a new conceptual framework for understanding anti-immigrant hostility.
Michael Wiseman
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Visiting Scholar
1996 to 1997
Michael Wiseman, professor of public affairs, urban and regional planning, and economics, Unversity of Wisconsin-Madison, completed four chapters of a book that will examine the political struggle at the national level to encourage welfare reform at the state level and the outcome of welfare innovation in four states: California, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. He also launched two major studies of households affected by welfare reform in Wisconsin, in his capacity as vice chairman of the Wisconsin Works Management and Evaluation Project.
Edward N. Wolff
New York University
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
Edward N. Wolff, professor of economics at New York University, will write a book on the effects of changes in information technology on the skill levels of workers, job structure, earnings, and earnings inequality in the United States during the 1990s. He will focus in particular on how information technology has affected low-skill workers. Wolff's preliminary results indicate that although information technology raises skill requirements, it may actually have a negative effect on earnings.
Julian Wolpert
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
1998 to 1999
Julian Wolpert, professor of Geography, Public Affairs and Urban Planning at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, will write a book on American charitable giving in the public and nonprofit sectors. Wolpert will explore whether a generous federal government crowds out social impulses by states, municipalities, and nonprofits, and whether those tendencies are likely to resurge if federal efforts are pared. He will also look at regional differences in the sources, levels, and targeting of generosity.
Cara Wong
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Visiting Scholar
2015 to 2016
Wong will study how individuals perceive and react to their environments, using a new map‐drawing measure of people’s “local communities.” Using multiple survey datasets, she will investigate how individuals’ perceptions of the racial and ethnic characteristics of their locales affect their intergroup attitudes, civic engagement, and their preferences for policies that address immigration and social inequities.
Carol Worthman
Emory University
Visiting Scholar
2004 to 2005
Carol Worthman, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, will co-author a book that uses epidemiological and ethnographic methods to detail the developmental outcomes of a group of children as they move into adolescence and adulthood in impoverished rural North Carolina. Using quantitative analysis coupled with personal vignettes, the book will aim to show how disadvantaged youth achieve their potential in the face of adversity, and how public policy can best assist young people in healthy development.
Julia C. Wrigley
City University of New York
Visiting Scholar
2003 to 2004
Julia C. Wrigley, professor of sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center, will write a book that analyzes episodes of harm to children in non-parental child care, and the responses of parents, caregivers, and investigative authorities to these breaches of trust. Trust has rarely been analyzed in a childcare context, yet non-parental care requires profound trust in others to operate. Unlike in Europe, few mechanisms are in place in the United States to help parents assess providers.
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
University of Minnesota
Visiting Scholar
2025 to 2026
Wrigley-Field will analyze how demography enables and constrains cultural and political change through population ties to historical events and experiences. For example, she will investigate the high death rates of older Black Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the number of Black Americans who have a living relative who experienced Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement and how this may impact political engagement. Her project will draw on historical vital statistics, data from the IPUMS Multigenerational Linkage Project, and demographic models.