2019-20 PhD Candidates

Sarah Ahmed

Dissertation: Women’s Empowerment through Polio Eradication: Agency and Representation of Lady Health Workers in Pakistan

Areas of Interest: Global sociology, gender and development, south Asia, global health, agency and empowerment

Committee: Michael Dreiling (Chair), John Foster, Kemi Balogun, Yvonne Braun (International Studies & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)

Curriculum Vitae

 

Jeanine Cunningham

Dissertation: Contesting the Valley: How Regional Elites Legitimate Claims to Environmental Resources

Areas of Interest: Political sociology, social movements, sociology of culture, environmental sociology, deviance and crime, network analysis, quantitative and qualitative methods

Committee: Ryan Light (Chair), Michael Dreiling, Matthew Norton, Raoul Liévanos, Peter Walker (Geography)

Curriculum Vitae

 

Allison Ford

Dissertation: Environmental Politics at the End of the World – Prepping as Environmental Practice

Areas of Interest: Environmental sociology, culture, emotions, gender, contemporary social theory, qualitative methods

Committee: Kari Norgaard (chair), Ryan Light, Matt Norton, CJ Pascoe, Anita Chari (Political Science)

Curriculum Vitae

 

Andrea Herrera

Dissertation: Understanding Systems of Power through Femininity Practices

Areas of Interest: Sexualities, sex & gender, race, embodiment, intersectionality, qualitative methods, new media

Committee: CJ Pascoe (chair), Kemi Balogun, Tristan Bridges, and Priscilla Ovalle (Cinema Studies)

Curriculum Vitae

 

 

Kathryn Norton-Smith

Dissertation: “You’re Too Young for This Cancer”: An Intersectional Analysis of Off-time Illness

Areas of interest: Race and ethnicity, intersectionality, health and illness, sex and gender, medical sociology, body and embodiment, environmental sociology

Committee: Jessica Vasquez-Tokos (Chair), Ellen Scott, Ryan Light, Jill Harrison, and Elizabeth Budd (Education)

Curriculum Vitae

 

Larissa Petrucci

Dissertation: Taylored Flexibility: Agile, Capitalism, and the Software Labor Process

Areas of Interest: Work economy and organizations, labor process, political economy, race, class, and gender

Committee: Jill Ann Harrison (Chair), Eileen Otis, Ellen Scott, Anita Chari (Political Science)

Curriculum Vitae

 

 

Dan Shtob

Dissertation: Resilience, Recovery, and Reality: Hurricanes, Housing, and the Human Cost of Disaster in Two Florida Coastal Communities

Areas of interest: Environmental sociology, urban sociology, environmental change and natural hazards, environmental justice and inequality, law and society

Committee: Richard York (Chair), Raoul Liévanos, Erin Moore (Architecture and Environmental Studies), Leigh Johnson (Geography)

 

 

---

2018-19 Placements

Camila Alvarez

• Initial Placement: UC Merced
• Dissertation: From Classical to Critical: Addressing Theoretical and Methodological Gaps within Environmental Justice Research
• Committee: Richard York (Chair), Clare Evans, Ellen Scott, Laura Pulido (Ethnic Studies)

Cassie Comley

• Initial Placement: California Department of Education
• Dissertation: From Classical to Critical: Addressing Theoretical and Methodological Gaps within Environmental Justice Research
• Committee: Jessica Vasquez-Tokos (Chair), Ken Lieberman, Michael Aguilera, Ocean Howell (History)

2017-18 Placements

J. M. (Jules) Bacon

• Initial Placement: Grinnell College (visiting assistant professor)
• Dissertation: Producing, Maintaining and Resisting Colonial Ecological Violence: Three Considerations of Settler Colonialism as Eco-Social Structure
• Committee: Kari Norgaard (Chair), Stephanie LeManager, Jill Harrison, Brian Klopotek (Ethnic Studies)

David Dominguez

• Dissertation: Tourism and Change in Costa Rica: Pura Vida, Power and Place in a Small Beach Community
• Committee: Richard York (Co-chair), John Foster (Co-chair), Jill Harrison, Yvonne Braun (International Studies)

Patrick Greiner

• Initial Placement: Vanderbilt University
• Dissertation: Growth, Power and Time: Developing a Deeper Understanding of Anthropogenic Drivers of Carbon Dioxide Emissions from 1960-2015
• Committee: Richard York (Chair), Clare Evans, John Foster, Leigh Johnson (Geography)

Heather Marek

• Initial Placement: Oregon Court of Appeals
• Dissertation: Criminalizing Our Way to Racial Equality? An Empirical Look at Hate Crime Regulation
• Committee: Matthew Norton (Chair), Clare Evans, Stuart Chinn, Erik Girvan (Law)

Elizabeth Miller

• Initial Placement: Whittier College (adjunct instructor)
• Dissertation: Farming Without Farmers: Deskilling in Contract Broiler Farming
• Committee: Richard York (Chair), Eileen Otis, Jim Elliott, Stephen Wooten (International Studies)

Robert Molinar

• Initial Placement: University of Oregon (adjunct instructor)
• Dissertation: Self-Organization in Tiny Homes as a Response to Homelessness: Negotiating Autonomy and Transitional Living Inside a “Village” Community
• Committee: Jill Harrison (Co-chair), Matthew Norton (Co-chair), Greg McLauchlan, Naomi Zack (Philosophy)

Brian Ott

• Initial Placement: Truman State University
• Dissertation: Sense Work: Inequality and the Labor of Connoisseurship
• Committee: Eileen Otis (Chair), Jill Harrison, Jocelyn Hollander, Stephen Wooten (International Studies)

Tony Silva

• Initial Placement: Northwestern University (postdoc)
• Dissertation: Bud-Sex: Sexual Flexibility Among Rural White Straight Men Who Have Sex with Men
• Committee: CJ Pascoe (Chair), Raoul Lievanos, Kristen Barber, Peter Alilunas (Cinema Studies)

Evan Shenkin

• Initial Placement: Oregon State University (visiting instructor)
• Dissertation: Activism or Extractivism: Indigenous Land Struggles in Eastern Bolivia
• Committee: Richard York (Chair), Galen Martin, Matthew Norton, Derrick Hindery (International Studies)

Lauren Stewart

• Initial Placement: University of Oregon (instructor)
• Dissertation: The Power of Pleasure: Heteronormativity and Homophobia in Heterosexual Sex
• Committee: Jocelyn Hollander (Co-chair), CJ Pascoe (Co-chair), Eileen Otis, Yvonne Braun (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies)

Craig Van Pelt

• Initial Placement: Sandhills Community College (instructor)
• Dissertation: Food Values and the Human Right to Food: A Sociological Analysis of Food Insecurity in Oregon
• Committee: Michael Dreiling (Co-chair), Matthew Norton (Co-chair), Galen Martin, Greg McLauchlan, Stephen Wooten (International Studies)

Tongyu Wu

• Initial Placement: Zhejiang University, China
• Dissertation: Brogrammers, Tech Hobbyists, and Coding Peasants: Surveillance, Fun, and Productivity in High Tech
• Committee: Eileen Otis (Chair), Aaron Gullickson, J Shiao, Andrew Nelson (Management)

2016-17 Placements

MeCherri Abedi-Amin

• Initial Placement: Washington College (visiting assistant professor)
• Dissertation: Bound by Blackness: African Migration, Black Identity, and Linked Fate in Post-Civil Rights America
• Committee:  Aaron Gullickson (Chair), Kemi Balogun, Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, Alai Reyes-Santos (Ethnic Studies)

Jordan Besek

• Initial Placement: University of Buffalo
• Dissertation: On the Historicity of Social and Ecological Change: From the Asian Carp Invasion to the Reversal of the Chicago River
• Committee: Richard York (Chair), Jim Elliott, John Foster, Marsha Weisiger (History)

Martha Camargo

• Initial Placement: University of Chicago Center for the Economics of Human Development, Research Data Administrator
• Dissertation: Reinvigorating the Contact Hypothesis
• Committee: Caleb Southworth (Chair), Aaron Gullickson, Richard York, Joseph Lowndes (Political Science)

Madhurima Das

• Initial Placement: Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
• Dissertation: Mothers Across Borders: A Transnational Analysis of Parenting Between Indian Mothers in Edison and Kolkata
• Committee: Eileen Otis (Chair), Jill Harrison, Ellen Scott, Arafat Valiani (History)

Sierra Deutsch

• Initial Placement: Dissertation Editor LLC
• Dissertation: Western Conversation as an Accidental Vector for Capitalism: A Socioeconomic Cross-National Comparison of Irrawaddy Dolphin Conversation Projects
• Committee: Richard York (Chair), Jocelyn Hollander, Jill Harrison, Lamia Karim (Anthropology)

Cade Jameson

• Dissertation: Radical Conservation and the Politics of Planning: A Historical Study, 1917-1945
• Committee: John Foster (Chair), Val Burris, Richard York, Joseph Fracchia (Honors College)

Shih-Chi Lin

• Initial Placement: Formosan Association for Public Affairs
• Dissertation: Producing, Maintaining and Resisting Colonial Ecological Violence: Three Considerations of Settler Colonialism as Eco-Social Structure
• Committee: Aaron Gullickson (Chair), Matthew Norton, Richard York, William Terry (Political Science)

David Martin

• Initial Placement: Aquinas College
• Dissertation: User ID/entity: Examining the Role of Online Interactions in Black Racial Identity Formation
• Committee: J Shiao (Chair), CJ Pascoe, Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, Gordon Hall (Psychology)

Mitchell Monsour

• Dissertation: Together and Alone: Intimacy and Alienation in the Age of Competitive Individualism
• Committee: Greg McLaughlan (Chair), Jill Harrison, Richard York, Patricia Curtain (Journalism)

Uyen (Cindy) Nguyen

• Initial Placement: Northwestern University, Admissions and Marketing for the Master of Science in Analytics Program
• Dissertation: Vietnamese American Racialization and Ethnic Organizations
• Committee: J Shiao (Chair), Aaron Gullickson, Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, Gordon Hall (Psychology)

Intan Suwandi

• Dissertation: Back to Production: Labor-Value Commodity Chains and the Imperialist World Economy
• Committee: John Foster (Chair), Val Burris, Richard York, Daniel Buck (Geography)

2015-16 Placements

Tracy DeHaan

• Initial Placement: San Jose State University
• Dissertation: Dying to Succeed: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Online News Reports About Affluent Teen Suicide Clusters
• Committee: Robert O’Brien (Chair), CJ Pascoe, Jean Stockard, Autumn Shafer (Journalism)

Julius McGee

• Initial Placement: Portland State University
• Dissertation: The Paradox of Green Commodities
• Committee: Richard York (Chair), John Foster, Ryan Light, Stephen Wooten (International Studies)

2014-15 Placements

Matthew Clement

• Initial Placement: Grinnell College (visiting assistant professor)
• Dissertation: Local Growth and Land Use Intensification: A Sociological Study of Urbanization and Environmental Change
• Committee: Jim Elliott (Chair), John Foster, Richard York, Rebecca Lewis (Planning, Public Policy, and Management)

Matthew Friesen

• Initial Placement: Bluffton University
• Dissertation: Parsing the Palate: A mixed Methods Analysis of the US Food Advocacy Movement
• Committee: Michael Dreiling (Chair), Ryan Light, Kari Norgaard, Yvonne Braun (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies)

Jeffrey Gunn

• Initial Placement: Whittier College
• Dissertation: Pipelines of Influence: The Fossil Fuels Industry, Climate Change, and the Policy Planning Network
• Committee: Michael Dreiling (Chair), Ryan Light, Kari Norgaard, Yvonne Braun (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies)

Christopher Hardnack

• Initial Placement: Colorado Mesa University
• Dissertation: Framing Neoliberalism: The Counter-hegemonic Framing of the Global Justice, Antiwar, and Immigrant Rights Movements
• Committee: Michael Dreiling (Chair), John Foster, Greg McLauchlan, Daniel HoSang (Political Science)