Current Scholar Profiles

Go to Cohort 15 (2008-2010)
Go to Cohort 16 (2009-2011)

Cohort 15 (2008-2010):
Rene Almeling	Monique Lyle	M. Marit Rehavi
Kyna Fong	Helen Marrow	Fabio Rojas
Colin Jerolmack	Eric McDaniel	Kevin Stange
Anna Levine	Hans Noel	Patricia Strach
	Christine Percheski
RENE ALMELING (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar)received her Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA in 2008.  Her research interests include gender, economics, and medicine, and she is currently studying how gendered inequalities are produced through and reflected in market processes in medical settings.
	In her dissertation, "Egg Agencies, Sperm Banks, and the Medical Market in Genetic Material," she compares how these sexed cells, and the women and men who produce them, are culturally and economically valued, social processes that result in gendered regimes of bodily commodification.  As a Scholar, she is studying how gendered ideas about bodies shape the presentation of and response to genetic knowledge.  Following the Program, she will join the Sociology Department at Yale University as an assistant professor.
KYNA FONG (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received a Ph.D. in Economics from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in December 2007.  Her research interests lie in microeconomic theory and applying microeconomic theory to questions rooted in healthcare.
	One part of her dissertation considers performance reporting in healthcare, focusing on the empirical observation that introducing score cards has led to distortions in physician behavior (for example, some surgeons avoid sick patients).  In such settings, she looks at optimal score card design.  Her current RWJ project studies the potential gains from using performance reporting to improve matching between physicians and patients.  She is also studying the bargaining dynamics between insurance plans and medical providers, as well as prescription drug procurement.  After her time in the Program, Dr. Fong will assume a position as an assistant professor in the Economics Department at Stanford University.
COLIN JEROLMACK (Harvard University Scholar) received a Ph.D. in sociology from the City University of New York in 2008. His primary fields of research are urban communities and environmental sociology.
	His dissertation is a comparative ethnography that examines the ways that relations with animals structure urban life.  He is currently completing a book based on the dissertation, to be published by the University of Chicago Press.  As an RWJF Scholar, he is interested in studying the relationship between animal control policies and the perceived threat of zoonotic diseases.  He is also researching how people who are socially isolated make decisions about their health, and if they suffer health disparities independent of poverty.  After completing the Program, he will assume a position as assistant professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at New York University.
ANNA LEVINE (Harvard University Scholar) received a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2008. Her research interests include industrial organization economics and health economics.
	Her dissertation examines the impact of market structure on the returns to innovation in the biotechnology pharmaceutical industry. As a Scholar, she is interested in continuing to explore how market structure and competition impact the effects of regulation and the direction of innovation in the health care industry. Following the program, she will join the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis as an assistant professor.
MONIQUE LYLE (University of Michigan Scholar) received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University in 2008.  Her primary research interests are in political psychology and race and ethnicity in American politics.
	She is particularly interested in how American institutions and elites shape the psychological development and make-up of American citizens.  Some of her specific research involves examining how racial communication from political elites contributes to system justifying ideologies and implicit attitudes associated with White supremacy.  She also is working on projects examining the extent to which racial communication and racialized political phenomena affect mental health.  Dr. Lyle will assume a position as an assistant professor at in the department of political science at Vanderbilt University upon the completing the Program.
HELEN MARROW (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University in 2007.
	She is co-editor of The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965 (Harvard University Press, 2007), and she has also published on second-generation Brazilians in the United States, the dispersion of contemporary U.S. immigration streams into “new destinations”, and intergroup relations in the rural American South.  Her dissertation, which she is currently revising into a book manuscript, is a local-level comparative study of ways in which the rural South, as a new immigrant destination context, affects Hispanic newcomers’ patterns of economic, sociocultural, and political incorporation in the United States. While in the Program, Dr. Marrow is investigating safety-net primary healthcare providers and staff members’ experiences with and views about providing care to undocumented immigrants, in an effort to understand their roles as institutional agents of undocumented immigrants’ incorporation into versus exclusion from American society.
ERIC MCDANIEL (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004 and is currently on leave from the University of Texas at Austin, where he is an assistant professor in the Department of Government.
	His research focuses on religion and politics, and racial and ethnic politics. He is particularly interested in the role of Black religious institutions in shaping Black political behavior. His forthcoming book examines the determinants of Black church political engagement. He is currently working on a project that examines the political consequences of differing religious interpretations.
HANS NOEL (University of Michigan Scholar) received his Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA in 2006 and is currently on leave from the Department of Government at Georgetown University, where he is an assistant professor.
	Dr. Noel's research focuses on political parties and ideology. He is the co-author of The Party Decides: Political Parties and Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform. His dissertation, "The Coalition Merchants: How Ideologues Shape Parties in American Politics", argues that ideological divisions precede and influence the coalitions that politicians form in partisan conflict. Dr. Noel's current research explores the ideological divisions over a variety of health policies, including national health care, temperance and the prohibition of alcohol, the war on drugs, the regulation of tobacco, and the regulation of trans fats.
CHRISTINE PERCHESKI (Harvard University Scholar) completed her Ph.D. in sociology at Princeton University in 2008. Her primary research interests are in women's employment, family demography, and social inequality.
	Dr. Percheski's previous work has considered questions of how family characteristics correlate with employment including whether becoming a father affects employment differently for married and unmarried men, how the child penalty on women's employment has changed across birth cohorts of women in professional occupations, and how the employment patterns of new mothers vary by whether they are married, cohabiting or lone mothers. Her current research projects include an examination of how increasing instabilities in employment and family life place low-income families and racial/ethnic minorities at risk of health insurance coverage losses and a study of who becomes a nurse and why there are so few men in the nursing profession. After completing the program, she will start a position as an assistant professor of Sociology at Northwestern University.
M. MARIT REHAVI (University of Michigan Scholar) received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008.
	Her primary fields of interest are public finance, labor, and political economy.  Her dissertation examined the effect of politician identity, specifically gender, on policy outcomes and politician voting behavior.  She also researched the effects of tax incentives for charitable giving and the dynamics of net charitable giving.  In other work, she has studied unions and written about the evolution and design of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program.  After completing the Program, she will join the Economics Department at the University of British Columbia as an assistant professor.
FABIO ROJAS (University of Michigan Scholar)  received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 2003. He is currently on leave from Indiana University Bloomington where he is an assistant professor of Sociology. His research focuses on political movements and institutional change.
	His recent book, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline, was published in 2007 by the Johns Hopkins University Press.  His current work in this area examines the impact of the anti-Iraq War movement.  Dr. Rojas will use his time in the Program to work on the application of mathematical modeling to health issues. He intends to develop a technique for visualizing and analyzing complex sequence data. He also intends to develop more refined models of social networks, risk taking, and sexually transmitted disease.
KEVIN STANGE (University of Michigan Scholar) received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008. His fields of interest are labor and public economics and public policy.
	His dissertation examined several different influences on post secondary educational attainment using rich longitudinal data on a recent cohort of U.S. youth. This work quantified the option value arising from the sequential nature of schooling decisions, assessed whether fertility timing influences college dropout, and examined the importance of institutional quality to degree completion. His current research also examines the determinants of participation in social insurance programs. As a Scholar, he is studying the health care workforce, the relationship between education and health, and the procedural choices of physicians and patients. After completing the Program, he will assume a position as an assistant professor in the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
PATRICIA STRACH (Harvard University Scholar) received a Ph.D. in political science from University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2004 and is currently on leave from the University at Albany, State University of New York, where she is an assistant professor in the Departments of Political Science, and Public Administration and Policy.
	Her research examines the relationship between social and political institutions in American public policy.  Previously, she mapped the role of family in the policy process and the consequences for policy when social practices changed over time.  Currently, she is working on a project that looks at when and why advocacy groups that wish to solve a social problem choose to turn to government (hence making public policy) and when and why they take alternative strategies (e.g. fundraising, marketing).
Cohort 16 (2009-2011):
Megan Andrew	Hahrie Han	Colin Moore
Sharon Bzostek	Hilary Levey	Brendan Nyhan
Shana Gadarian	Matthew Levy	Maria Rendon
Marco Gonzalez-Navarro	Trevon Logan	Edward Walker
MEGAN ANDREW (University of Michigan Scholar) received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin in 2009. She is generally interested in the reproduction of socioeconomic inequality over time, particularly social-
	psychological facets of this process.  Her dissertation examined socioeconomic inequalities and decision-making in post-secondary education.  Her other research explores the long-term effects of primary grade retention and the intergenerational effects of health selection.  As a Scholar, Dr. Andrew will begin new research on the relationships between differential outcomes in education and health among immigrant and native-born minority young adults in the U.S.
SHARON BZOSTEK (Harvard University Scholar) received her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University in 2009. Her primary research interests are in the fields of family demography, childhood inequality, and health disparities.
	Current research projects include an examination of mothers’ re-partnering patterns after non-marital births, a study of child health disparities resulting from instability in family structure, and an analysis of differences in maternal and paternal reports of children’s health status. After completing the program she will assume a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University.
SHANA GADARIAN (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University in 2008. Her primary research interests are in American politics, political psychology, and political communication.
	She is currently at work on a book entitled, The Politics of Threat: Terrorism, Media, and Foreign Policy Opinion, which examines the effect of the mass media and particularly emotionally laden types of media coverage on political attitudes in the United States. Specifically, the project examines how media coverage of terrorism influences Americans’ foreign policy attitudes and addresses whether the news media can persuade the public on questions of war and peace. Additionally, she is involved in a collaborative research project that explores how anxiety over immigration and the economy affect political information processing. As an RWJF Scholar, she will explore how fear appeals about health issues influence information seeking and public opinion.
MARCO GONZALEZ-NAVARRO (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 2009. His primary research interests are in the field of development economics.
	His dissertation studied the introduction of Lojack in Mexico to identify crime externalities across state lines. He is currently working on a randomized control trial study of the impact of infrastructure (pavement, sewerage, and water) on health outcomes, human capital investment and labor decisions in the context of a developing country urban area. After completing the Program he will join the University of Toronto as an assistant professor.
HAHRIE HAN (Harvard University Scholar) received her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in 2005, and will be on leave from Wellesley College,
	where she is the Sidney R. Knafel Assistant Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science.  Her research focuses on ways people become motivated to participate in politics, particularly among the underprivileged.  Her current research examines the role that political organizations (such as civic associations, parties, and campaigns) play in motivating participation and the dynamics of political mobilization around key policy issues.
HILARY LEVEY (Harvard University Scholar) received a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University in 2009. Her primary research interests are in childhood and
	family, culture, gender, and qualitative methods. Her dissertation (under contract with the University of California press) examined the development of competitive children's activities for elementary school-age children and how families experience three case study activities-- chess, dance, and soccer. Previous work has examined child beauty pageants, Kumon after-school learning centers, and the role of children in ethnographic research.  While in the program she will investigate the rise of children's injuries from youth sports.
MATTHEW LEVY (Harvard University Scholar) received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009.  His interests include public
	economics and behavioral economics. His dissertation examined the effect of psychological biases on addiction and the demand for cigarettes.  As a Scholar, he is interested in exploring how consumers' systematic departures from rational choice affect their health decisions, and the potential for policy-makers to help overcome these market failures.
TREVON LOGAN (University of Michigan Scholar) holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently on leave from
	The Ohio State University, where he is an assistant professor in the Economics Department. His primary research interests are in the areas of economic history and economic demography.  His research focuses on historical living standards and comparative measures of well being. He is particularly interested in the development of measures of human welfare that can be consistently applied through time. Dr. Logan’s current research includes the development of endogenous measures of preferences, the economics of marriage transfers, and the value of information in illegal markets.
COLIN MOORE (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 2009. His fields of interest include American political
	development, public bureaucracies, and the theoretical and historical analysis of institutional change. Dr. Moore's dissertation examined the acquisition and governance of overseas colonies after the Spanish-American War as a formative moment in American state development.  He is also interested in the use of mass petitioning as a recruitment tool in the early American republic.  As a Scholar, he plans to study the politics of veterans' health care benefits with a focus on the development and evolution of the Veterans Health Administration as a single-payer government-run health care system.
BRENDAN NYHAN (University of Michigan Scholar) received his Ph.D. in political science from Duke University in 2009. His research focuses on the
	consequences of increased partisanship in the contemporary era - in particular, the growing number of controversies and beliefs that are not supported by convincing factual evidence but still play an important role in shaping behaviors and outcomes. As a Scholar, he plans to study the role of misperceptions in the debate over health care reform and to conduct experiments testing different strategies for correcting them. Following the Program, Nyhan will join the Department of Government at Dartmouth College as an assistant professor.
MARIA RENDON (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received her Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard University in 2009.  Her primary research
	interests are in the fields of immigration, urban poverty and social policy. Her dissertation examined the role of high poverty neighborhoods in shaping school and work outlooks and decisions of male, young adults who are children of Mexican immigrants.
EDWARD WALKER (University of Michigan Scholar) received a Ph.D. in sociology from Pennsylvania State University in 2007. He is currently on leave from the University of Vermont, where he is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology.
	Dr. Walker’s scholarly interests include civil society, political participation, organizations, social movements, and the non-profit sector. Most broadly, his research focuses on how institutions influence civic and political participation. His work appears in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and Sociological Forum. His current projects include a longitudinal study of community organizations across the U.S., an examination of the influence of grassroots lobbying on political participation and policymaking, and research on how institutional contexts shape protest. As an RWJF Scholar, he plans to examine the role of professional grassroots lobbying campaigns in mobilizing stakeholders on health issues.
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