Vance Alan Puchalski’s research focuses on resource exchange networks through which unbanked and credit invisible members of the urban poor meet their financial services needs. His most recent peer reviewed publication, “Credit at the Corner Store,” analyzes the role of Detroit-area convenience and liquor stores in providing financial services such as check cashing, informal store credit, and short-term loans to impoverished customers.
Larry is a PhD student in sociology. His interests are in political, economic and labor sociology. What are the causes and consequences of automation of work? Present and past projects deal with the link between unions, trade shocks and robotization; the link between low-skilled migrant labor and robotization; the link between robotization and job training; the link between labor shareholder strength (pension funds) and worker outcomes; the work experiences of online gig workers; and activism around universal basic income.
Ferdose Idris graduated cum laude in Sociology from the University of Washington in 2016 where she was awarded the Woolston Award for Academic Excellence. Her research has included explorations of how law affects socioeconomic status and racial minorities. For her senior thesis she examined the differences between red states and blue states on childhood wellbeing indicators for both blacks and whites. She is interested in studying race and segregation, education, and inequality with a focus on identity formation, bias, and social mobility.
Andrew is a PhD student in Sociology and an affiliate of the Office of Population Research. His interests include socioeconomic inequality, biosociology, and health, with particular emphasis on contextual effects, psychosocial wellbeing, and early life course determinants of risk and resilience. He earned bachelors degrees in sociology and biology from the University of Washington, where he conducted research on neighborhood effects and parental incarceration.
Vivek Nemana is a PhD student in Sociology and Social Policy. He is interested in the effects of global markets and media on people's constructions of community and identity. To that end, his research examines changing norms of masculinity in small towns in India and the midwestern United States. Other interests include the the sociology of culture, migration, ethnomethodology, and science and technology studies. Vivek holds a master's degree in Economics from New York University, as well as an undergraduate degree in journalism and economics, also from New York University.
Shay O'Brien studies elites and conservatives in the United States. Her areas of interest include economic sociology, elite sociology, race & ethnicity, and religion. Before beginning graduate school at Princeton, Shay worked on a large-scale randomized control trial at the social policy research firm MDRC. She graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Anthropology (Honors), where she was a research assistant in the Anthropology department and won the prizes for Best Honors Thesis and Highest Achievement in Linguistic Anthropology.
Alex is a computational and historical sociologist with a guiding interest in the formal organization of knowledge, skills, and techniques. His areas of interest include computational social science, political and historical sociology, and the sociology of knowledge. Alex designs computational and statistical tools for researchers across the social sciences; investigates contemporary practices for creating, managing, sharing, and analyzing data; and conducts historical work on the political organization of knowledge production and dissemination.
