Estela B. Diaz is a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology, and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Education Research Section (ERS) at Princeton University. Her research areas include culture, economic sociology, education, family, organizations, and social inequality. Estela’s current book project examines the commodification of child rearing through a case study of private nursery, preschool, and kindergarten admissions in New York City.

Estela received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University in 2023 and A.B. in Sociology with a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Princeton University in 2014. Estela’s work has been funded by a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. 

Before pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology, Estela worked as an undergraduate admissions officer at Princeton University and helped organize Princeton’s Office of Religious Life’s first ever “Poverty and Peacemaking” Conference, an interdisciplinary gathering on the role of poverty alleviation as a critical component in peacebuilding efforts.