Former RSF Visiting Scholar and grantee Michèle Lamont (Harvard University) has been elected the 108th president of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Her one-year term began in August 2015.

During her time as a Visiting Scholar at the Foundation, Lamont researched the class, racial, and cultural differences among low-status white-collar and blue-collar workers residing in the suburbs of New York and Paris. She is editor of the book The Cultural Territories of Race (1999), which was co-published by RSF and the University of Chicago Press, and a contributor to the RSF volumes The Colors of Poverty (2010) and Evangelicals and Democracy in America (2011).

Lamont is currently Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and professor of sociology and African and African American studies at Harvard University. Previously, she chaired the Council for European Studies and was a member of the High Council on Science and Technology to the prime minister of France. As president of ASA, Lamont succeeds Ruth Milkman (CUNY Grad Center), who was also previously a Visiting Scholar at RSF and co-editor of the 2014 RSF book What Works for Workers.

Of her ASA term, Lamont stated, "I plan to work on enhancing sociology's influence in education, politics, and the media in order to broaden our impact as an enlightening, empowering, democratizing, and diversifying force."

This month the Russell Sage Foundation welcomes sixteen leading social scientists as Visiting Scholars for the 2015-2016 academic year. While in residence, they will pursue research that reflects RSF’s commitment to strengthening the social sciences and applying research more effectively to important social problems.

This year, the Visiting Scholars’ projects include an analysis of the factors that contribute to racial wealth disparities, research on how increases in economic inequality have affected voter turnout in congressional elections, and a study of over 1,000 twins that examines the relationship between genetic and social factors in adolescent development and academic achievement.

The Foundation also welcomes Marta Tienda (Princeton University) and Christopher Jencks (Harvard University) as Margaret Olivia Sage Scholars for the 2015-2016 academic year. Named to honor RSF’s founder, Margaret Olivia Sage, these scholars are nominated and selected by the Board of Trustees on the basis of their outstanding career accomplishments and relationship with the Foundation.

Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of the American Prospect, and labor journalist Steven Greenhouse (formerly of the New York Times) will also join RSF this fall as Visiting Researchers. Both researchers, who are recipients of Presidential Authority Awards, will work on book manuscripts during their time in residence.