Graduate Students

Kristen R. Adkins-Butler
Lissette Aliaga Linares
Nicole Angotti
Veronica C. Aravena
Jennifer March Augustine
Jodi Berger Cardoso
Wasudha Bhatt
Sarah F. Blanchard
Kaeley Bobbitt
Claude Bonazzo
Dustin C. Brown
Maryann Bylander
Pei Yin Chien
Juanita J. Chinn
Chi-Tsun Chiu
Jongmook Choe
Carlos Diaz Venegas
Molly Dondero
Jessica L. Dunning-Lozano
Jane Ebot
Juan Carlos Esparza Ochoa
Denisse Gelber
Erika Grajeda
Caitlin Hamrock
Andrea Henderson
Erin Trouth Hofmann
Igor Holas
Celia Hubert Lopez
Melissa Humphries
Jennifer Karas Montez
Yujin Kim
Janet Kuo
Joseph Lariscy
Jinwoo Lee
Jocelyn Jing Li
Amias Maldonado
Nicolette Manglos
Hernan Manzelli
Ryan K. Masters
David McClendon
Michael McFarland
Cate McNamee
Kristen Miller
Yuka Minagawa
Chelsea Moore
Stipica Mudrazija
Anna Strassmann Mueller
Nina Palmo
Veronica Pedregon
Marcos Perez
Aida Isela Ramos
Corinne E. Reczek
Lynsey Kluever Romo
Tricia Ryan
Viviana Salinas Ulloa
Isaac Sasson
Neven Shafeek Amin
Dara Shifrer
Jeremiah Spence
Charles Stokes
Jennifer Storch
April Sutton
Mieke Beth Thomeer
Anna Thornton
Anthony Walker
Ying-Ting Wang
Christine Wheatley
Kari White
Nina Wu
Hirotoshi Yoshioka

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Kristen R. Adkins-Butler PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1714 Phone: 512-471-8349 kristen_adkins@earthlink.net CV (PDF format)

Education: MS, Georgia Institute of Technology BS, Georgia Institute of Technology

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Kristen Adkins-Butler is currently pursuing a PhD in Sociology with a specialization in Demography. She holds a Master of Science in Public Policy with a specialization in Science and Technology Policy (special interest in Health Policy). For the 2005-2006 Academic Year, she was awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for the study of Russian Language. Her research interests include reproductive health in post-Soviet societies, and the relationship between internal displacement and health outcomes.
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Lissette Aliaga Linares PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology lissette @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Peru)

Field(s) of Study: Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Lissette's research interests link urbanization and socioeconomic segregation trends with the formation of local economies and labor markets. Her focus of research is the informal economy in major Latin American cities.  She is currently working on her dissertation project about the sociospatial dynamics of the informal economy comparing Lima-Peru and Bogotá-Colombia.  An earlier version of her work can be traced in her master thesis in which she analyzed the spatial patterns of street markets attending to the sociodemographic characteristics that determine the extension as well as the affordability of this type of economic activity. She presented the findings of her research in several conferences and is currently publishing articles related to this subject. Methodologically, she integrates statistical spatial techniques with qualitative perspectives and is engaged to a research agenda to foster the use of such perspectives in the understanding of demographic events, processes of stratification and labor markets disparities. Currently, she is also involved as a researcher in a Lincoln Institute sponsored project entitled “Residential segregation across time and scales in Bogotá” in which she collaborates with Prof. María José Alvarez of the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá-Colombia. She has also assisted as a consultant in several research projects related to development agencies such the World Bank, International Labor Organization and Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing.
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Nicole Angotti PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1702 Phone: 512-471-8332 nangotti @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Columbia Univ BA, Univ of California, San Diego

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Nicole Angotti is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology, with interests in global/transnational processes, health and illness, gender and sexuality, and field research methodologies.  She is particularly interested in how Western ‘development’ interventions are incorporated differentially in non-Western societies. Her dissertation "Testing Differences" considers the implementation of Western HIV testing norms in sub-Saharan Africa. This research has been supported generously by a UT Liberal Arts Graduate Research Fellowship (2007-2008), a Doug Forbes Dissertation Research Award (2008), a QUEST Research Award (2009), and a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation (2008-2009).

Nicole is affiliated with the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (MDICP) based at the University of Pennsylvania, and has conducted and coordinated fieldwork for several socio-demographic research projects-- both large and small-scale-- throughout Malawi (Central Africa). Currently, Nicole is working with a health education research team, contracted by the Texas Department of State Health Services, to assist in the development of community-based HIV prevention planning.

Websites:
http://www.malawi.pop.upenn.edu/
http://mtmalawi.project.googlepages.com/home

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Veronica C. Aravena PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1904 Phone: 512-471-8396 aravena @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Louisiana State Univ BA, Louisiana State Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Aravena's research interests are primarily demographic, focusing on the Mexico/United States migration process and associated migrant and immigrant health issues with an emphasis on adaptation, gender, and health and health behavior disparities in the U.S. Her current work explores the impact of environment and context on the migration and health relationship among children in the U.S.
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Jennifer March Augustine PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1706 Phone: 512-471-8467 jmarch@mail.utexas.edu

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Northwestern Univ

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Education and the Transition to Adulthood; Health Disparities

Research interests: Jennifer March Augustine's research focuses on how and why differences in maternal education—in tandem with and independent of its clear associations with employment status, income, and union formation—cultivates particular family processes that structure children’s academic opportunities and progress in ways that set them up for a more successful transition into and through adulthood. This research interweaves developmental perspectives on how the family environment shapes child development, demographic perspectives on how these processes interact with family structure change, and sociological perspectives on stratification. Moreover, it integrates national, quantitative and local, qualitative methodologies, and aims to understand how the processes that contribute to the intergenerational transmission of advantage during early childhood reinforce societal level inequalities.

In conducting this research, Jennifer takes several steps to build on prior research, particularly from developmental psychology, that links mothers’ experiences in the educational system to how they shape their children’s lives through styles of discipline, interaction, and stimulation as well as their management of children’s learning in and out of the home. Her research follows two approaches. First, it situates maternal education in a broad array of personal and family characteristics in order to understand when and for whom pursuing an education is likely to produce the biggest gains for current or future children. Second, it explores how educational attainment helps mothers interact with and “work” formal organizations and institutions in order to gain academic advantages for their children.
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Jodi Berger Cardoso PRC Trainee

Department: Social Work jberger@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MSSW, Columbia University School of Social Work BA, Portland State University

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Jodi Berger Cardoso received her bachelors degree in sociology from Portland State University and a masters degree in social work from Columbia University. She is a returned peace corps volunteer from Ecuador. Prior to pursing a PhD in social work, she worked as a family therapist in Latino communities in both Houston and New York. Mrs. Cardoso's research interest include the health and well-being of Latino immigrant families. She is interested in the impact of poverty and immigration policy on their health and mental health outcomes. Mrs. Cardoso has worked on several research projects in this area, including the Fragile Families and Child Well-being study and a study examining the effects of 1996 Immigration law (IIRIRA) on communities in Texas, Mexico, and El Salvador. In addition, she was the principal investigator on a qualitative study exploring the over-representation of children of Latino immigrant families in foster care. Mrs. Cardoso has presented the results of these studies at a several interdisciplinary conferences.
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Wasudha Bhatt PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology wasudha.earth@gmail.com

Education: MPh, Univ of Delhi MA, Univ of Delhi, Hindu College, Delhi BA, Univ of Delhi, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi

Field(s) of Study: Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Wasudha is a Ph.D. student in Sociology. Her research interests include development, migration and human well-being.
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Sarah F. Blanchard PRC Trainee NICHD Pre-doctoral Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2304 Phone: 512.475-8643 sarah.blanchard @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, Villanova Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Education and the Transition to Adulthood; Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Sarah Blanchard comes to the University of Texas at Austin having completed a BA in Sociology at Villanova University with concentrations in honors, peace and justice studies, and ethics for politics and the law.

Broadly speaking, Sarah studies the relationship between various facets of access and mobility for social stratification.  Current projects focus on migration and deportation, the experiences of immigrant students in US schools, the transition to college and patterns of enrollment, and gender inequity in graduate education.  A working paper with Nestor Rodriguez, Erin Hamilton, and Hirotoshi Yoshioka examines and explains the high rates of deportation to Honduras and provides a statistical portrait of this deported population using a new and unique data set of survey information collected in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula from 2004-2008.  A second paper with a fellow graduate student examines the relationship between teacher attitudes or bias towards immigrant students and student attachment to teachers in the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 and how this dynamic affects student outcomes.  Finally, Sarah's MA thesis explores educational paths to social mobility by examining the 'geography of opportunity' and patterns of enrollment into the Math and Sciences based on local options for postsecondary education with particular attention to the unique effects for low SES and minority students.

Since the Fall of 2009, Sarah has worked as a graduate research assistant to Chandra Muller for the Gender Equity in Graduate Education study.  Through close collaboration with a small PRC team and the Graduate School, a campus-wide survey is to be administered early in 2010 to address a wide array of features of both the academic and outside lives of graduate students. This project involves use of a graduate student panel, administrative data, and focus groups and promises to provide insight into the gendered process of graduate education at the University of Texas. [top]

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Kaeley Bobbitt PRC Trainee

Department:Human Development and Family Sciences kaeley.bobbitt @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, Univ of the South

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families

Research interests:Kaeley Bobbitt's research interests center around early childhood in context, more specifically, the manifestations of economic disparities in early childhood development and implications and directions for policy.  Her prior research has included understanding the relationship between prenatal cocaine exposure and both child and adolescent development, how poverty status affects executive function in early childhood, as well as the role of family chaos in the development of internalizing behavior problems in young children. Her current research is focused on how the federal family leave policy is biased toward families of higher socioeconomic status as well as the consequences of the bias for both maternal and child health and development. She plans to further her research of disparities in early childhood through an investigation of family chaos and its implications for later child development.
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Claude Bonazzo PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1602 Phone: 512.471-8295 cbonazzo @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Texas Stat Univ BS, Texas State Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Education and the Transition to Adulthood; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Claude Bonazzo is a second year graduate student in the Department of Sociology with research interests in race and ethnic relations, education, and health disparities. Claude is currently working on a project that draws on national quantitative data and locally collected qualitative data to examine the degree to which efforts to support the English language learning of low-income Mexican immigrant women enables them to better manage their children’s experiences in American schools.  The project is currently funded by The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and is a subset of a larger NICHD-funded grant, Race/Ethnicity, Poverty, and the Connection between Child Health and Early Education, that is housed at the Population Research Center and headed by Rob Crosnoe, Shannon Cavanagh, and Cynthia Osborne.
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Dustin C. Brown PRC Trainee NICHD Pre-doctoral Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1816 Phone: 512-232-1711 dbrown @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Middle Tennessee State Univ BS, Middle Tennessee State Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Dustin’s research broadly examines the influence of socioeconomic factors on morbidity and mortality. He is currently involved in several interrelated projects that examine how stratification processes play-out within the context of marriage to influence health. In addition, he is collaborating on projects with colleagues at the PRC and elsewhere examining educational differentials in life expectancy and mortality compression among older adults.
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Maryann Bylander PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology bylander @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Rice Univ

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Maryann Bylander is a PhD Candidate in Sociology. Her research interests include migration, rural development, globalization, NGOs, and gender. She is currently in Cambodia doing research for her dissertation, a qualitative study of migration and rural development.
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Pei Yin Chien PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1700G mypei @ mail.utexas.edu

Education: BA, National Taiwan Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Pei-Yin Chein's interests primarily lie in social inequality and therefore her former project work focused on gender and ethnicity. In the future, Pei-Yin would like to explore health disparities across race/ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender lines to see how social and economic inequalities of minority groups affect health disparities, and moreover, affect socioeconomic attainment of the Asian Americans/Taiwanese.
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Juanita J. Chinn PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1814 Phone: 512-471-1712 juanita @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BS, Brown Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Juanita is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include US Adult Mortality and Health, particularly the intergenerational transfer of health.  While at UT, she has been involved with research on the Race/Ethnicity crossover patterns seen in older adult mortality in the United States using the National Health Interview Survey matched to 1986-2002 follow-up mortality data from the Multiple Cause of Death File. Juanita has also served as a Research Intern on Dr. Robert Hummer’s NIH funded project "Educational Differences in U.S. Adult Mortality."

Juanita currently holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics: Psychology and a Master of Arts in Sociology.
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Chi-Tsun Chiu PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1816 Phone: 512.232-1711 chitsun.chiu @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Columbia Univ MBA, Fu Jen Catholic Univ BA, Nation Taiwan Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Religion and Demographic Processes

Research interests: Chi-Tsun's research interests are demography, health and mortality. Future project works will focus on health/mortality disparities among racial/ethnic groups.
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Jongmook Choe PRC Trainee

Department: LBJ School of Public Affairs cjm@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MS, George Washington University LLM, Northwestern University School of Law BA, Korea University

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities, Children, Youth and Families, Religion and Demograpic Processes

Research interests: Jongmook Choe is currently pursuing a PhD in public policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. His research interests are inequality and development. Also, he is interested in the effect of health care coverage on various social factors in the United States and other countries.
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Carlos Diaz Venegas PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology c_diaz@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MS, Florida State Univ BA, ITESM Campus Monterrey, Mexico

Field(s) of Study: Latin American and Border Demography; Health Disparities

Research interests: Carlos Diaz Venegas is interested in studying fertility and immigration issues linked to Latin American countries, especially Mexico. He would like to closely analyze assimilation and disruption effects among married Mexican women who leave the country after their husbands and how the move affects fertility rates.
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Molly Dondero PRC Trainee NICHD Pre-doctoral Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2304 Phone: 512-475-8643 mdondero @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Florida BA, Pennsylvania State Univ

Field(s) of Study: Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Molly Dondero is currently pursuing a PhD in Sociology. She holds a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and English. Molly's general research interests include demography, international migration, immigrant incorporation,  development, and urban sociology. Current research projects include an analysis of school and educator characteristics in new immigrant-receiving communities in the U.S. A second  project focuses on the impact of migration on sending communities in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Peru.

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Jessica L. Dunning-Lozano PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2418 Phone: 512.471-8315 jdunning_lozano@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Chicago BA, Univ of California, Berkeley

Field(s) of Study: Education and the Transition to Adulthood; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Jessica L. Dunning-Lozano's research is focused in the areas of Race, Ethnicity, Stratification, and Education. Her methodological background is predominantly qualitative; however, Jessica has been trained in the fundamentals of statistical analysis at the University of Chicago and is interested in expanding her proficiency in quantitative research methods. As a trained ethnographer, Jessica centered her research on the micro level processes and practices of particular school environments in the reproduction of disparate student outcomes by race and class. More recently, she has developed an interest in macro level analyses of school tracking across schools and the impact of shifting immigration patterns on the common practice of assigning students to a particular academic track or stream by perceived ability.

Jessica plans to pursue her developing research interest in stratification processes across schools and demographically diverse communities. 
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Jane Ebot PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology janebot@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, Coe College

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Jane is interested in HIV/AIDS within a context of food insecurity and climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa.  She is currently working on several papers on education and mental health, hoping that the statistical experience will enable her to tackle the very few and reliable sociological surveys on Africa. 
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Juan Carlos Esparza Ochoa PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1710 Phone: 512-471-8348 jesparza@prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Universidad de Guadalajara (Mexico) MA, Centro de Investigaciones Pedagógicas y Sociales (Mexico) BA, Universidad del Valle de Atemajac (Mexico)

Field(s) of Study: Religion and Demographic Processes; Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Juan Carlos Esparza Ochoa is currently involved with the Project on Religion and Economic Change (as assistant to the director, Dr. Robert Woodberry). This is a multi-year project interested in issues related to religion and its relationship to social and economic change, measuring the long term impact of religious and missionary work on Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. His specific involvement is to study Latin American sources for geographical and statistical data about pastoral work of the Catholic Church. He is also designing the system of extraction and systematization of data bases, including programming for geographical weighted regressions and imputation. This effort is part of a larger project measuring the impact religipus work had on education rates, medical facilities, and economic development.

Juan Carlos is also particularly interested in the evangelization and social action of the Catholic Church among Indigenous populations. His plans for a research project will be to explain and understand the place that religious services have in the development of populations in contexts of poverty and exclusion. This requires a multi-disciplinary or even trans-disciplinary approach for understanding the social, cultural, and political dimensions of religion. The goal is to study, from a critical and reflexive conceptual platform, models of Catholic Evangelization in Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil). In the future he expects to also include cases of Catholic Evangelization of African American populations. Indigenous and African American populations are both marginalized from several perspectives in Latin America. The approach will use statistical data and analysis of narratives.
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Denisse Gelber PRC Trainee

Department:Sociology Office: MAI 1622 Phone: 512.232-9268 dgelber @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Universidad Catolica del Uruguay

Field(s) of Study: Latin American and Border Demography;  Education and the Transition to Adulthood

Research interests: Denisse Gelber is an MA student from the Sociology  Department at UT-Austin, and has a BA in Sociology (Universidad Católica del Uruguay). Denisse has held the position of researcher in the Program "Integración, Pobreza y Exclusión Social" at Universidad Católica del Uruguay for the last six years. During that time she focused on inequality issues related to education, health, labor market and residential segregation’s outcomes, always aiming at public policy recommendations.

For her BA thesis, she analyzed educational paths during Middle School in Uruguay  to identify the configurations of risk and protective factors that lead to successful, unsuccessful (drop outs) and risky trajectories among low SES teenagers. Following this research line, her Master's thesis explored the relationship between friendship paths and educational paths for the same population, analyzing differences by gender.
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Erika Grajeda PRC Trainee

Department:LBJ School of Public Affairs Office: MAI 1622B colimota_1@hotmail.com CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, UT-Austin BA, CSU Stanislaus

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: After completing an MA in Latin American Studies, with a concentration on Social Policy in the region, it became apparent to Erika Grajeda that the development strategies and social policies (i.e. conditional cash transfers) that were being implemented in places like Mexico and Brazil were also being tested in other regions of the developing world like India and Bangladesh. At that point, she became interested in the effectiveness of these policies in such culturally and socially diverse regions. Why had cash transfer programs such as Oportunidades been so effective in Mexico, but failed to yield similar results in India?  Had the socioeconomic, demographic and human development indicators of these South Asian countries been taken into account?  Such initial queries would then inspire later work in other fields such as property rights, inheritance and gender in South Asia.
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Caitlin Hamrock PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2304 Chamrock@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Field(s) of Study: Education and the Transition to Adulthood, Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Caitlin Hamrock is interested in studying Race, Gender, Inequality, and Education.  In 2008, she co-authored a paper with Dr. John Robert Warren comparing minimum wage rates and high school drop out rates at the state level for the past 30 years.  In 2009, she conducted interviews with undergraduate students for an upcoming book by Dr. Enid Logan that will examine the 2008 presidential race with a focus on Barack Obama's candidacy and the role of race and gender in the presidential race. 
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Andrea Henderson PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology henda@mail.utexas.edu  CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Univ of North Florida

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Religion and Demographic Processes; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Andrea Henderson's research interests are centered around three main areas:  (1) the implications of religious involvement for mental and physical health outcomes; (2) the influence of religious involvement on family life; and (3) the role of religious institutions, practices, and values among African Americans in the U.S. 
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Erin Trouth Hofmann PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1706 Phone: 512-471-8467 ehofmann@prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Georgetown Univ BA, American Univ

Research interests: Erin Trouth Hofmann is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology. She completed her comprehensive exams in Demography and Migration in 2009, and is beginning work on her dissertation on "Gender, Households, and Migration in the Republic of Georgia." The dissertation will examine how human capital, economic conditions, and norms about men's and women's roles in society influence the migration decisions of men and women in post-Soviet Georgia.

Erin's primary research interests are in the social consequences of labor migration and the role of gender in migration processes. She is particularly interested in incorporating the experiences of the Eurasian migration system into existing theories of migration. Erin holds a BA in International Studies from American University and an MA in Russian and East European Studies from Georgetown University. Prior to coming to the University of Texas, she worked at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C
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Igor Holas PRC Trainee

Department:Human Development and Family Science iholas@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, Oberlin College

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Education and the Transition to Adulthood

Research interests: Igor Holas' research interests center around the contextual factors influencing children's, adolescents', and young adults' achievement and orientation towards educational and career goals. His master thesis seeks to highlight the interplay between the transition from elementary to middle school and school quality on adolescents' educational outcomes. Another of his projects studies parenting clusters in a low income African American sample and their effects on children's outcomes.
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Celia Hubert Lopez PRC Trainee

Department:Sociology celia.hubert@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, ITEM, Mexico

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities, Education, Transitions to Adulthood, and Religion and Demographic Processe

Research interests: Celia Hubert López is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology. Her main research interests are demography, education and poverty. She is also interested in the relationship between poverty, health and education.
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Melissa Humphries PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2304D Phone:512.475-8643 mhhumphries@gmail.com

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Rice University

Field(s) of Study: Education, Transitions to Adulthood; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Melissa's research interests center around education, stratification, education policy and demography. She also is interested in the intersection of immigration and education. 
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Jennifer Karas Montez PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1816 Phone: 512-471-1711 jennkaras @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Houston MS, Purdue Univ BS, Purdue Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Jennifer Karas Montez is a fourth year PhD student in the Department of Sociology and a PRC trainee at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research is primarily concerned with disparities in women's health and aging trajectories, although more generally her research interests encompass social demography, aging and life course, health disparities, and health policy.

Jennifer's current research examines gender differences in the the relationship between education and mortality, long-term trends in the education-mortality relationship by gender and race, and the role that employment and marriage play in shaping health insurance disparities among women.

Prior to arriving at the University of Texas at Austin, Jennifer received a Master of Science in Statistics from Purdue University and a Master of Arts in Sociology from the University of Houston
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Yujin Kim PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2304B Phone: 512.475-8643 yjkim @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Korea Univ BA, Korea Univ

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Education and the Transition to Adulthood

Research interests: Yujin Kim is interest in how mass imprisonment affects family formation. She is also doing research on how family structure makes different transitions to adulthood, such as educational outcome. Her thesis was about sociological (parents’ monitoring and peer pressure) and psychological factors on computer game participation of juvenile in South Korea.
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Janet Kuo PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology kuojanet2003@gmail.com CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, National ChengChi University, Taiwan BA, National ChengChi University, Taiwan

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families, and Education, Transitions to Adulthood

Research interests: Janet Kuo is a first-year graduate student in the Department of Sociology. Her research interests are family, demography, and education. She focuses on how and to what extent family factors, such as family structures and parents' social economic statues, etc., are related to a variety of subsets of a child's development, for instance, child's academic performance, attitudes toward a variety of social phenomena and personal life issues, and their experiences of transition into adulthood. With special concerns about social inequality issues among children, she is also interested in the role that education plays in alleviating negative effects that growing up in the disadvantaged families would make on the children.
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Joseph Lariscy PRC Trainee NICHD Pre-doctoral Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1814 Phone: 512-232-1712 jlariscy@prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Univ of Georgia

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities, Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Joseph is interested in how educational attainment, race/ethnicity, and nativity influence disparities in physical health and mortality among adults in the United States.  He also studies the migration of Latinos to new destinations in the southern United States.
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Jinwoo Lee PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1706 Phone: 512-471-8467 jwlee @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Korea Univ BA, Korea Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Religion and Demographic Processes; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Jinwoo's research interest includes health and demography, especially focusing on the effects of various types of social relationship on both mental and physical health with life-course perspective.
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Jocelyn Jing Li PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1706 Phone: 512-471-8467 jingli @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MS, Univ of Texas at Austin MS Texas A&M Univ B.S, Nankai Univ, (Tianjin, China)

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Jing Li is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her major areas of interests are demography, quantitative methods, and health. She is especially interested in topics related to immigration, mental health, and health. She is currently conducting dissertation research on how migration process influences immigrant health, including comparisons between immigrants and non-immigrants as well heterogeneity between immigrants.
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Amias Maldonado PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology a.maldonado418 @ gmail.com CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, UT-Austin

Field(s) of Study: Religion and Demographic Processes; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Amias Maldonado is a first year graduate student in the Department of Sociology with interests in gender, sexuality, social inequality, and identity formation.  Amias is interested in exploring the intersections of sociosexual subgroups and social inequality using mixed methods.  Amias is also pursuing research on the role of marriage and monogamy in modern society.
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Nicolette Manglos PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1702 Phone: 512-471-8332 nmanglos @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Wheaton College

Field(s) of Study: Religion and Demographic Processes; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Nicolette is in her fourth year of graduate study in the Department of Sociology. She specializes in Religion, Development, Political Sociology, and Population Studies, as well in using and developing mixed-methods strategies for development and population research in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has worked on several social-demographic research projects in both Malawi and Ghana over the past three summers. During this past summer she conducted pre-dissertation fieldwork on the conversion of youth to Charismatic Churches in Accra, Ghana, hosted by the Regional Institute of Population Studies at the University of Ghana.

Her work focuses broadly on how religious beliefs, practices, institutions, and movements shape demographic behaviors and economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her current research concerns the growth of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity and its potential effects on the salience of kinship ties and ethnic/tribal group identities in the region.
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Hernan Manzelli PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1706 Phone: 512-471-8467 manzelli @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Latinamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLASCO, Argentina), BA, Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Latin American and  Border Demography; Religion and Demographic Processes

Research interests: Hernán Manzelli is a graduate student with interests in reproductive health, gender, HIV/AIDS, and public health issues. He is particularly interested in health inequalities emerging from different social determinants. He received his BA in Sociology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina and his MA at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO-Argentina). Since 1996, he has been a member at the Centro de Estudios de Población (CENEP) and faculty member at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, lecturing on quantitative and qualitative methods in the social sciences. His master's thesis looks at sexual coercion in adolescents in Argentina. Other research has included gender violence, sexual and reproductive health services in Latin America, severe maternal morbidity and post-abortion services, and social conditions of people living with HIV/AIDS.
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Ryan K. Masters PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1814 Phone: 512-471-1712 rmasters @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BS, Western Washington Univ BA, Western Washington Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Ryan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology. He aims to receive his degree in spring 2010 with an emphasis on demography and population health. Ryan's research interests are in U.S. health and mortality disparities across the life course and cohorts, with particular attention given to cohort changes in the educational conditioning of mortality risk across age. During his time at UT and the PRC, Ryan has been involved in a NIH-funded project, led by Dr. Robert Hummer, analyzing the many facets of the education-mortality relationship in the United States.

Ryan is also interested in applying new methods to the study of U.S. social movements and civic engagement. His Master's Thesis analyzed the growth of temperance organizations in New York State during the early stages of the U.S. Temperance Movement.
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David McClendon PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology david.mcclendon@ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, College of William and Mary

Field(s) of Study: Religion and Demographic Processes; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: David McClendon is a first year student in the Department of Sociology interested in studying the intersection of religion and public life.  He hopes to use a variety of methodological approaches to look at the ways in which religious beliefs, practices, and institutions impact political engagement and public discourse.
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Michael McFarland PRC Trainee NICHD Pre-doctoral Trainee

Department:Sociology Office: MAI 1622D Phone: 512.232-9268 mmcfarland @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Connecticut BSE., Arizona State Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Religion and Demographic Processes

Research interests: Michael's research interests are concerned with how social factors influence health and well-being, especially among older adults. His research regarding gender differences in the relationship between religion and mental health is forthcoming at the Journal of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences. His most recent research explores how social factors, such as marital biography and education, influence biological markers of stress.
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Cate McNamee PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1804 Phone: 512-471-7778 catem @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Univ of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Latin American and  Border Demography

Research interests: Cate McNamee interests include fertility, family structure, and reproductive health She is particularly interested in investigating race/ethnic/nativity differences in family and reproductive health decisions such as marrying, cohabitating, divorcing, remarrying and using family planning. She has examined contraceptive use between Indigenous and non-Indigenous in Ecuador and Bolivia and also participated in a field research study looking at birth control use among Latinas in El Paso, TX. Other topics of research include marriage after a birth by race, ethnicity and religious affiliation in Brazil and infant mortality risk of low risk/very low risk caesarean sections by race, ethnicity and nativity in the U.S.  Currently Cate’s primary interest focuses on remarriage differences by race, ethnicity and nativity with in the U.S.
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Kristen Miller PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1700E kgmiller17 @ hotmail.com CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BS, Texas A&M Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Kristen's research explores how social forces influence various health outcomes. Specifically, she is interested in examining how class, race, and gender based inequalities in health develop over time in the U.S.
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Yuka Minagawa PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1700E yminagawa@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Harvard University BA, Sophia University

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Yuka Minagawa is a first year graduate student in the Department of Sociology with interests in health, family, and development. Yuka is particularly interested in exploring how the collapse of the Soviet Union has affected people’s lives, focusing on health lifestyles of the Russian population. Currently, Yuka is pursuing research on the association between economic hardship and alcohol consumption among Russian men.

Yuka holds a BA in Foreign Studies and Russian Language from Sophia University and an MA in Regional Studies - Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia from Harvard University. Prior to coming to the University of Texas at Austin, Yuka worked at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) as a country officer and designed development assistance projects in Viet Nam.
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Chelsea Moore PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2304H Phone: 512.475-8643 chelseamoore @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BS, Texas A&M Univ

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Education and the Transition to Adulthood

Research interests: Chelsea Moore is a doctoral student in Sociology.  Her interests include education, the transistion to adulthood, and family demography.  She is currently working on projects looking at the development of math and science attitudes in childhood and adolescence.
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Stipica Mudrazija PRC Trainee

Department:Public Affairs smudrazija@prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MPP, Georgetown Univ BS, Univ of Zagreb, Croatia

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Stipica's research interests include economics of aging and social security policy, especially the relationship between public and private intergenerational transfers as well as sustainability of pension and health care systems in rapidly aging societies. He is currently working on several projects focusing on some aspects of the aforementioned issues.
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Anna Strassmann Mueller PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2316 Phone: 512-471-8474 amueller @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Wellesley College

Field(s) of Study: Education and the Transition to Adulthood; Children,Youth and Families; Health Disparities

Research interests: Anna Strassmann Mueller is a graduate student in Sociology, specializing in education, adolescent development, and health. She works with Professor Chandra Muller as part of the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA) study (Dr. Muller, PI). Mueller is also a recipient of a 2005 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Mueller’s dissertation focuses on the role of schools in body weight in adolescence and young adulthood. In the U.S., adolescents often experience pressure to conform to normative ideals that equate being thin with ideal femininity and being muscular with ideal masculinity. Though the majority of adolescents report being aware of normative body ideals, how adolescents incorporate these ideals into their own weight-control decisions can vary dramatically, largely in reaction to their experiences with weight-control and body ideals in the immediate contexts of their daily lives.

With her dissertation, Mueller investigates a key social context in adolescence – schools – in order to identify the role they play as a location for social comparisons of bodies and weight-control behaviors during adolescence and young adulthood. Mueller is interested in who within the school context serves as a salient target for social comparison and how these comparisons shape weight-control behaviors. She also explores the emotional consequences of weight-related adolescent cultures in schools and their long term consequences to health and well being in early adulthood.

To investigate the role of schools in body weight, she uses longitudinal data, hierarchical-linear modeling, and a nationally-representative sample of adolescents in 78 public and private U.S. high schools from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study (which collected education data from Wave III Add Health participants).
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Nina Palmo PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology npalmo @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MS, Univ of Texas at Austin MS, Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor BS, Univ of Michigan

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Nina Palmo’s research interests are in the area of family demography; in particular, the ways in which family structures and processes contribute to the intergenerational transmission of advantage or disadvantage. To this end, she is interested in studying marriage, union formation and dissolution, the transition to parenthood, and father involvement. Nina is also interested in the interaction of social policy with individual behavior and wellbeing as well as cross-cultural comparisons between the United States and Scandinavia.
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Veronica Pedregon PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology vpedregon @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MPH, Univ of Texas School of Public Health A.B., Brown Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Veronica Pedregon is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology, specializing in health and demography. She is primarily interested in researching the social causes of population health and health inequalities, including institutionalized discrimination and poverty. Her research will explore, within a multilevel framework, the social determinants of health from infancy to adulthood, considering the mechanisms through which social inequalities manifest biologically. She is currently investigating the link between residential segregation and health.
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Marcos Perez PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1700A marcosperez@ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, Torcuato Di Tella University (Argentina)

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families;

Research interests: Marcos Perez is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology. His main areas of interest are social inequality and social movements. In particular, Marcos is interested in the way social movements in general (and poor people's movements in particular) may promote the implementation of progressive and redistributive policies, therefore acting as a force towards a better distribution of wealth. Through his work as a trainee in the PRC, Marcos hopes to better understand the sources of social inequality, the role of certain public policies in its reproduction, and finally, its effect on access to education and health services. Furthermore, he expects this experience will help him to explore the relationship that (he believes) exists between social movements and distribution of wealth.
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Aida Isela Ramos PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology airamos @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BS, Texas A&M Univ

Field(s) of Study: Religion and Demographic Processes; Education and the Transitions to Adulthood; Latin American and  Border Demography

Research interests: Aida Isela Ramos is a second year graduate student in the Department of Sociology with research interests in educational inequality, religion, and US-Mexico border studies.  Aida is interested in examining the intersections of religion and education, specifically how religion impacts education attainment of Latinos and other non-White groups.  Aida interests have also grown to include how children and adolescents conceptualize math and science differently in terms of relevance to their daily lives.

Working with Dr. Catherine Riegle-Crumb and Chelsea Moore, her recent research employs the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study to analyze variation in 4th and 8th students’ science and math attitudes across race and gender.  In addition, she is assisting Dr. Chandra Muller and Dr. Catherine Riegle-Crumb in evaluating a nationwide teacher training program by Sally Ride Science. Lastly, Aida is working on a variety of research projects with Dr. Chris Ellison using data from the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
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Corinne E. Reczek PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1614 Phone: 512-232-1731 Reczek @ prc.utexas.edu Webpage CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Syracuse Univ

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities, Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Corinne Reczek is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology, trainee in the Population Research Center, and portfolio student in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her mixed-methods research focuses on the social inequalities of gender, sexuality, and health within the context of family relationships.
 
Corinne’s dissertation, “Eat, Drink, and Be Managed: Gender and 'Health Work’ among Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Couples,” is a qualitative examination of how men and women in long-term partnerships shape one another’s health. In this work, Corinne develops the concept of health work, a new model for how health is shaped within the context of intimate ties. Additionally, Corinne utilizes gender relations theory—a perspective that has been absent in the health and family literature—in order to explain the gendered dynamics of health work.
 
In addition to her dissertation work, Corinne has published on the union formation of gay and lesbian couples, health behavior and social ties, and the health consequences of intergenerational relationships for both adult children and parents. Corinne's future research plans include a mixed-methods study examining how entering into, or exiting, an intimate relationship shapes individual health. She will also conduct a qualitative project that examines the intergenerational relationships between adult children who are gay and lesbian and their parents.

Corinne was awarded the American Sociological Association Medical Sociology Section’s Louise Johnson Scholar Award, a University Continuing Fellowship, and an American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship. Corinne has trained at the Williams Institute at UCLA, and is a member of the Center for Population Research in LGBT Health at the Fenway Institute.
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Lynsey Kluever Romo PRC Trainee

Department: Communication Studies lynseykromo@ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, American Univ BA, Albion College

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families;

Research interests: Lynsey Kluever Romo is interested in the fields of family and health communication, particularly how families of all socioeconomic levels communicate about such uncomfortable (but important) issues as weight and finances. Immediately prior to pursuing her Ph.D. in communication studies, she served as the communications director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin nonprofit that advocates for low-income Texans.
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Tricia Ryan PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology tsryan @ mail.utexas.edu

Education: MPH, Univ of Michigan BA, Univ of Pittsburgh

Research interests: Tricia Ryan is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology. Her research interests include gender and reproductive health in the former Soviet Union, especially the Central Asian republics, and the relationship between domestic violence and reproductive health outcomes.

Tricia's regional field work experience includes interviews with loval NGO leaders on domestic violence in Dushanbe, Tajikistan in the Summer 2005 while supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. During the Summer 2006, with the support of an Individual Advanced Research Oppertunity grant from the International Research Exchange Board (IREX) and a Social Science Research Council Eurasia Program Pre-dissertation Fellowship, she conducted interviews and focus groups on topics related to family life, domestic violence, and health in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. These newly collected data will be analyzed in combination with available quantitative data.
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Viviana Salinas Ulloa PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1714 Phone: 512-471-8349 vsalinas @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Universidad Catolica de Chile

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Latin American and  Border Demography

Research interests: Viviana Salinas Ulloa is interested in low fertility scenarios in Latin America and their implications for family and cultural changes. She is also interested in inequalities emerging from labor markets and in Latin America. Her goal is to generate information that can be used by policy makers in order to improve the life conditions not only of poor people, but also of people who have surpassed poverty but have a vulnerable, unstable social insertion
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Isaac Sasson PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1622E saisaac@gmail.com CV (PDF format)

Education: BSc, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Isaac Sasson is interested in how environmental policy and discourse contribute to the reproduction of inequality and health disparities in less developed countries. More specifically, he is interested in how economic interests are guised by the growing trend of "green" discourse and supported by international policies (i.e. the Kyoto protocol), which in turn affect the health of weakend populations worldwide. While the developed world strives to reach its own goals of sustainability (for example, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions), production is exported to less developed countries who pay the social and health costs of air pollution, deprivation of water through the export of "virtual water" etc.

Another key interest is the so-called "carrying capacity" of natural habitats for exponentially growing populations. While current demographic projections fail to take into consideration the limited amount and depletion of natural resources (such as drinking water, a growing need world wide), the key demographic processes in many populations are subject to change in the near future (given the expected change in rainfall under global warming, a pending energy crisis etc.). Nonetheless, for the past 300 years the classic Malthusian theory had been disproved in human populations over and over again - will it continue doing so?
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Neveen Shafeek Amin PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Neveen@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, UT-Austin BA, Cairo University, Egypt

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Education and the Transition to Adulthood; Health Disparities; Religion and Demographic Processes

Research interests: Neveen Shafeek Amin is a third year graduate student in the PhD program in Sociology. She completed her Master’s in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin 2009. Broadly speaking, Neveen is interested in religion, education, migration, family, and health. From May 2007 to August 2009, she was awarded the Ford Foundation International Fellowship to complete her Master’s degree. In September 2008, she received the Graduate Dean's Prestigious Fellowship. Her Master’s thesis was entitled “Educational Attainment of Coptic-Orthodox Egyptian-American Students in Texas.”  Her study investigated the associations of parental school involvement and parental religious involvement with children’s educational attainment among Coptic-Orthodox Egyptian-American students in Texas. Her research bridged the gap of the literature about Coptic-Orthodox Egyptian immigrant groups, especially in Texas.
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Dara Shifrer PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2322 Phone: 512-471-8331 dshifrer @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Univ of Nevada, Las Vegas

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Education and the Transition to Adulthood

Research interests: Dara Shifrer completed her MA in Sociology at UT Austin (UT) and is now working toward her PhD. Dara has a BA in Mathematics and taught middle school math in Austin for four years. Building on this experience, Dara employs both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the role of education in social stratification and life opportunities. She is especially interested in the various adaptive strategies that individuals adopt to function in different social contexts.

Working with Chandra Muller and Rebecca Callahan, Dara has embarked on a three year NSF-funded study of the academic and social experiences of students with learning disabilities along the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) pathway. Dara also recently employed 3 large nationally representative datasets to explore race and gender variation in the effect of high school sports participation on college-going from the 1980s through the 2000s. Dara assisted in the creation and implementation of a survey of UT's faculty members; in collaboration with the UT Gender Equity Task Force, this data was analyzed and compiled into a report on campus climate at UT. Dara assisted Amy Langenkamp in collecting qualitative data to conduct a mixed-methods study on the postsecondary expectations and preparation of first-generation college-goers. Lastly, Dara used qualitative data she collected from a Mennonite community in Belize to examine the role of cultural capital within educational relationships, as well as the intersection between religion and education.
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Jeremiah Spence PRC Trainee

Department: Radio, Television, Film jspence5 @ mail.utexas.edu

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Univ of Texas at Austin

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Education and the Transition to Adulthood; Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Jeremiah Spence is the founder and editor of the peer-reviewed, online, academic publication: Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, and has given presentations related to virtual worlds research at universities and conferences in Brazil, Israel, Europe, the United States and Canada. Jeremiah is pursuing his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States in the area of Communications and Sociology of Technology with specific research activities on the themes of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the digital divide, and virtual worlds research. Jeremiah has a Master of Arts in International Communications Theory and Technology Policy, and has been a visiting researcher at the University of São Paulo's School of the Future and the Institute of Information Science at the Federal University of Bahia, both in Brazil. Additionally, he has been invited to speak at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Unisinos, the Eduverse Foundation (Netherlands), and the University of Bonn (Germany). Jeremiah has been a leader in developing new methodologies for the study of social stratification and community mapping. Jeremiah is fluent in both Portuguese and Spanish.

Jeremiah's paper "Demographics of Virtual Worlds" was recently published in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. Jeremiah's paper "Generational Shifts in Language Use among U.S. Latinos: Mobility, Education, and Occupation" was recently accepted for publication in the journal International Migration, the journal of the International Organization for Migration. Jeremiah is the principal investigator of the Austin Memory Project and the president of the Virtual Worlds Research Consortium.
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Charles Stokes PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2418 Phone: 512-471-8315 cestokes @ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MDiv, Samford Univ BA, Samford Univ

Field(s) of Study: Religion and Demographic Processes; Children, Youth and Families; Education and the Transition to Adulthood

Research interests: Charles is broadly interested in family, religion, and education, and how these three major social institutions interact and adapt in the face of modernization and globalization. Currently, he is working on projects examining the conservative Protestant gap in educational attainment, investigating the impact of family change on religious fervor in America, and evaluating a UT program aimed at helping middle schools get more students interested in STEM fields.
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Jennifer Storch PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1700D jenniferstorch @ hotmail.com CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, Univ of Texas-Austin

Field(s) of Study: Religion and Demographic Processes; Health Disparities; and Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Jennifer Storch is a second year graduate student in the Department of Sociology. Her research interests include religion, health disparities, and education and gender disparities.  She wants to examine the ways that religion and gender interact in the lives of those in developing countries.
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April Sutton PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 2304C Phone: 512.475-8643 aprilsutton@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BS, Vanderbilt Univ

Field(s) of Study: Education and the Transition to Adulthood

Research interests: April Sutton is a third year student in the Ph.D. program in sociology.  April is interested in various topics within the sociology of education, with a particular focus on rural education.  Her research on rural education specifically examines how region, rurality, and local labor economy affect students' quality of education and educational trajectories. 

Currently, April's work with Drs. Chandra Muller and Amy Langenkamp investigates the effects of high school transfer on a host of academic and social outcomes. 

April received her bachelor's degree in sociology and American and Southern Studies from Vanderbilt University in 2006.  She spent the year before entering graduate school as a field researcher for the National Treatment Center Study at the University of Georgia's Institute for Behavioral Research.
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Mieke Beth Thomeer PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1700B MBThomeer @ gmail.com CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, Univ of Virginia

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Mieke Beth Thomeer is primarily interested in how health changes over the life course, particularly in the oldest ages. She studies how health behaviors and stress are impacted by social relationships, such as marital ties, children, adult siblings, and co-workers.
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Anna Thornton PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology anna_thornton@ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: BA, Creighton University

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Children, Youth and Families

Research interests: Anna Thornton is a first year graduate student with research interests in family, health, and gender.
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Anthony Walker PRC Trainee

Department: Human Development and Family Science Office: MAI 1622F Phone: 512.232-9268 a.b.walker@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: M.S., Kansas State University B.S., Brigham Young University

Field(s) of Study: Religion and Demographic Processes; Children, Youth and Families; Education and the Transition to Adulthood

Research interests: Anthony Walker is interested in studying emerging adults. Primarily, his interests focus on exploring under what conditions religiosity/religiousness, spirituality and divorce contribute to well-being and under what conditions these same constructs detract from well-being. A secondary interest includes understanding how premarital cohabitation fits in to the courtship process.
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Ying-Ting Wang PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1700H ytwang@mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, National Taiwan Univ, Taiwan

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities

Research interests: Ying-Ting's interests primarily lie in health and demography. She is interested health disparities due to educational differences. More specifically, she is working on educational difference in health among Asian American subgroups. She would like to study 1)to what extent health differentials among Asian American subgroups is impacted by differences in socioeconomic status, especially education, and 2)the link between education and health of Asian American subgroups.
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Christine Wheatley PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology Office: MAI 1622G christine.wheatley@ mail.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Colorado State University BA, Northland College

Field(s) of Study: Latin American and  Border Demography

Research interests:  Christine Wheatley is interested in analyzing the impact of emigration on local governing and development processes in sending communities in Latin America as well as the impact of social policies on migration patterns.  She has previously conducted research on the organization and operation of the local governing system in a rural Zapotec community in Oaxaca, Mexico. 
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Kari White PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology klwhite @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MPH, Tulane Univ MA, Univ of Arizona BA, Univ of New Mexico

Field(s) of Study: Latin American and  Border Demography

Research interests: Kari’s research interests focus on the relationship between international migration and women’s reproductive health outcomes.  Specifically, she is interested in how immigrant women’s reproductive health (e.g. fertility, contraceptive use, and pregnancy outcomes) is shaped by cultural beliefs and practices toward health, social structures such as citizenship and the accessibility of health services.  

Since August 2006, she has been working with faculty at the University of Texas on the Border Contraceptive Access Study, which is exploring differences in oral contraceptive pill use among Latina women living along the US-Mexico border.  She is also a co-investigator on the Texas Teen Opportunity Project, investigating adolescents’ future orientation and attitudes toward contraception and pregnancy across the state.  In addition to this work, she has carried out research on fertility and marriage in migrant sending areas, looking at the effect of community migration on Mexican women’s marriage and fertility, as well as differences in fertility among Turkish women with and without exposure to international migrants.  Her dissertation will compare childbirth timing and contraceptive use among Latina immigrant women in the United States and Turkish immigrants in Germany.  
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Nina Wu PRC Trainee

Department:Human Ecology Office: AMI 1700C ninawu@prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Texas at Austin BA, Univ of California, Davis

Field(s) of Study: Children, Youth and Families; Health Disparities

Research interests: While in graduate school Nina wants to focus her research on how a child’s development is being affected by the family’s economic, social, and cultural contexts. In addition, she wants to examine how a child’s academic and health outcomes are being affected by his or her school experiences and relationships with peers. She has a specific interest in studying children from low-income families and diverse communities, especially first and second generation Americans. She has gained intimate experiences with this population through the volunteer work that she did for seven years prior to entering graduate school. Eventually, she hopes to integrate her developmental and population research with public policy in order to develop and evaluate family programs and interventions. Her goal is to improve the lives of children and families.
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Hirotoshi Yoshioka PhD Candidate PRC Trainee

Department: Sociology hiro12 @ prc.utexas.edu CV (PDF format)

Education: MA, Univ of Pittsburgh BA, Univ of Pittsburgh

Field(s) of Study: Health Disparities; Latin American and Border Demography

Research interests: Hiro Yoshioka is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology and Mellon Fellow in Latin American sociology. His research interest includes migration, child mortality, racial and ethnic relation and quantitative methods. In his dissertation, he studies impacts of international migration on ethnic identity change in Guatemala and Nicaragua using mathematical models and computational simulation.

He is particularly interested in applying advanced quantitative methods for demography. For example, under the supervision of professors Dan Powers and Myeong-Su Yun (Tulane), he has written Stata programs mvdcmp.ado  and mvdcmpgroup.ado for conducting non-linear multivariate decomposition analysis. His other interests in quantitative methods include applied Bayesian statistics, spatial analysis, and complex adaptive systems.

Besides his dissertation, he is currently working on several projects including: 1) diffusion of modern contraceptive use in the Dominican Republic using both Demographic and Health Survey and data about human movements and communication patterns collected by Nathan Eagle (MIT/SFI); 2) formal theory of ethnic image construction in Latin American and 3) changing relations between HIV-AIDS transmission and socioeconomic status using DHS data and computational simulation.
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