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Faculty Books

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Sociology PhDs on the Job Market

• Lynn Gazley
• Stefan Griffin
• Jeong-Chul Kim
• Jennifer Rosen
• Yordanos Tiruneh
• Christine Wood
• Marina Zaloznaya

 

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Lynn Gazley, Ph.D.

l-gazley@northwestern.edu
CV

Dissertation Title:

“Our Particular Patients: Local Relevance in Clinical Research”

Areas of Interest:

Medical Sociology, Science Studies, Public Health

Dissertation Summary:

This dissertation examines the circumstances of scientists working at the periphery of a globalized research community in order to illuminate links between place, power, and knowledge-making. Contemporary medical research – like contemporary "big science" more generally - is a widely dispersed endeavor; however, the lower status data generation work and higher status knowledge production work that make up this research are often unequally distributed. I examine the situated, emplaced practice of science as performed at THAIDS, an HIV clinical research center in Bangkok, Thailand over its history from 1996 to 2007. Scientific actors with global aspirations – like the clinic at the center of this dissertation - aim to transform the structure of local and global research fields in order to create a protected and powerful niche. I argue that for clinics sited in resource limited settings, one useful strategy for climbing the global clinical trials hierarchy is to move from a position of power based on access to valuable patients to one based on scientific clout. As a local clinic engaged in international research, THAIDS navigated between what it saw as a need to conduct “locally relevant research” while still performing as a “world class research center”, which impacted the content and conduct of THAIDS’s research portfolio. THAIDS’s primary strategy for navigating between local and global rested upon the belief that Thais made up a class of particular patients, and therefore deserved tailored care based on a body of evidence generated from – and for - Thais. THAIDS’s participation in clinical research affected the conduct of HIV care in Thailand, both directly (at the clinic) and indirectly (though the tailoring of treatment guidelines and other shaping of national care). THAIDS’s ability to navigate the local and the global, and conduct care, depended upon the availability of resources including scientific clout, economic capital and materials, the goodwill of outside actors, and access to research subjects. This analysis contributes to the growing body of sociological work on clinical trials as knowledge production schemes by a global scientific community, and more broadly to the scholarship examining the international contours of scientific participation.

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Stefan Griffin, Ph.D.

s-griffin@law.northwestern.edu
CV

Dissertation Title:

“The Role of Race and Gender in the Professional Development of Women Attorneys of Color”

Areas of Interest:

Racial and Ethnic Minorities; Race, Gender, Class; Work, Occupations, and Professions; Sociology of the Legal Profession; Race and Higher Education, particularly blacks and graduate education

Dissertation Summary:

Women attorneys of color face continuing professional challenges and increased opportunities. I interviewed 56 women attorneys of color and asked them questions about their law school experiences, demographic or social structural constraints on career options and opportunities, mentor relations, job satisfaction, and work-life balance, and whether they would become a lawyer again. I examine their responses from race, gender, and class, organizational behavior, and symbolic interactionist perspectives. The accounts of my informants generally supported my hypothesis that social structural influences, such as race, gender, and class affect their careers. My informants understood their own agency and accepted the concomitant responsibilities. Informants were generally satisfied with their present legal work, despite the obstacles. I also interviewed two white male partners at a large, national law firm. They articulated the mainstream perspective on diversity, which emphasizes competition, meritocracy, ascribed characteristic neutrality, and a firm belief in a strong work ethic. Informants shared varying degrees of faith in the mainstream perspective, but felt their profession sometimes failed to live up to its professed ideals when it came to supporting their careers.

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Jeong-Chul Kim

h-schoenfeld@law.northwestern.edu
CV

Jeong-Chul (Charlie) Kim is a PhD candidate in sociology at Northwestern University. His research interests include political sociology, historical sociology, the sociology of law, and qualitative and quantitative methods. His dissertation is entitled "Indigenous Collaboration under Foreign Occupation: A Case of Japanese-Occupied Koreans from 1904 to 1945." This project explores how indigenous collaborators dealt with their ambivalence and uncertainty as they positioned themselves in the contradicting relationships arising within the occupied society. He uses an in-depth interpretation of archival data recently made available by the Korean government. His research interests in politics, history, and culture are also apparent in a separate project. In collaboration with Gary Fine, he examined the Koreans' memory movement, which publishes a biographical encyclopedia of pro-Japanese collaborators during the Japanese colonial period (forthcoming in Memory Studies).

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Jennifer Rosen

JenniferRosen2014@u.northwestern.edu

Dissertation Title:

“Political Institutions, Development Thresholds, and Women’s Political Representation in Africa and Latin America.”

Areas of Interest:

political sociology, gender, development, and comparative methods

Dissertation Summary:

Women’s representation in national governments exhibits substantial variation across countries. Theories designed to explain this variation suggest that different causal processes may operate across developed and less developed countries. However, research specifically in the context of less developed countries is limited. For this project, I use a 3-tiered nested analysis- an innovative mixed methodological approach combining quantitative and qualitative methods- to examine the political and social institutions most effective in increasing women’s political participation. I pay particular attention to the effects of two political institutions – type of electoral system and gender parity quotas -- across developed and less developed countries. I begin with quantitative cross-national, time-series analyses of 164 countries from 1992-2010. Statistical residuals and theoretical grounding provided the basis for case selection of 12 countries for brief case overviews, followed by in-depth case studies of Uganda, Tanzania, Panama, and Honduras. Preliminary statistical analyses show that while proportional-representation electoral systems are significant across all groups of countries, the effect size is over four times larger in developed countries. Moreover, while national gender parity quotas have a positive effect on women’s parliamentary representation in less developed countries, they are insignificant in developed countries. These results indicate that generalizing broadly across countries with varying levels of development does not adequately represent the effects of these political institutions. Different institutional changes may need to be pursued in developed vs. less developed countries in order to increase the proportion of women’s national governmental representation.

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Yordanos Tiruneh, Ph.D.

y-tiruneh@northwestern.edu

Dissertation Title:

“"HIV talks; it has a mouth": Lived Experiences and Illness Management of People Living with HIV/AIDS ”

Areas of Interest:

Medical Sociology, HIV/AIDS, Reproductive Health, Health Disparities, Gender, Culture, Youth, public policy, Sociology of Immigration, Urban Sociology, Sociology of Deviance

Dissertation Summary:

My dissertation explores how people living with HIV/AIDS differentially experience and manage their health, navigate their medical regimens and diversely relate to their medications. Through interviews and ethnographic observation among people living with HIV in Ethiopia, I demonstrate how medication practices are impacted by certain social domains, the sociological dynamics that lead to health management choices, and how to improve illness management experiences. My findings indicate that factors influencing the medication practices of patients are deeply rooted in culturally-specific behaviors, demonstrating that despite progress in biomedicine and increased access to medication, studying the social experiences of patients is still instrumental for understanding and explaining the perception, experience, and management of HIV. The study has practical implications for informing outreach efforts to assist resource-poor populations and might help lessen the negative health consequences of non-adherence for patients as well as their communities.

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Christine Wood

ChristineWood2011@u.northwestern.edu
CV

Dissertation Title:

“Making Gender Matter. Gendered Opportunities, Contested Research Objects, and the Making of an Interdisciplinary Field: Women’s and Gender Studies in American Universities, 1970-2010”

Areas of Interest:

Sociology of Culture; Sociology of Knowledge/Science; Sociology of Gender; Theory

Dissertation Summary:

My dissertation examines the development of research programs on women and gender in American universities since 1970. Knowledge production about gender has been shaped by complex historical transitions impacting higher education, as well as “ecological” conditions within individual programs and universities. Women’s studies programs began with similar intellectual goals: to address the lack of scholarship on women and sex stratification in traditional disciplines and to produce research on women. As interdisciplinary units spread scholars with varied perspectives on gender analysis redefined the focus of programs across institutions, incorporating diverse topics like masculinity and sexual orientation, leading to plural research agendas across contexts. The diversification of research agendas and program structures is the result of evolving ecological differences across local contexts, as well as the intellectually “supple” quality of objects of analysis like “women” and “gender,” which can be defined and used in different ways. My argument that programs began with homogenous content and became more distinct contributes a new model of disciplinary and organizational development. The argument is distinct from “new institutional” models which see organizations as increasingly homogenous despite distinct structural origins, as well as traditional models that see organizations as bearing the structural imprints of the their origins over time. I also present a case of “gendered” opportunities in academic research professions, by explaining how women’s studies programs opened opportunities for scholars to conduct research on women, gender, and sexuality and to pursue research careers in these areas. Data are archival records from 11 women’s and gender studies departments and programs, semi-structured interviews with professors, data on employment and career trajectories of scholars with appointments in programs, and content analysis of research output.

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Marina Zaloznaya

marinazaloznaya2008@u.northwestern.edu

Marina Zaloznaya is currently a PhD Candidate in the Sociology Department and a Graduate Fellow in Socio-Legal Studies at Northwestern University. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of criminology, economic sociology, and comparative-historical methodology. She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation, Law & Society Association, and Open Society Institute grants for her work on bureaucratic corruption in higher education in Eastern Europe. For her dissertation, Marina carried out a mixed-methods comparative-historical study of Ukrainian and Belarusian universities that determines political and economic roots of differences in their informal economies. She traces the development of higher educational sector in the two countries after the breakdown of the Soviet Union and identifies the reasons for the prevalence of corruption in some universities and its absence in others. Marina’s research also includes provocative work on human rights abuses by the totalitarian government of Belarus, which will be published by Oxford University Press in an edited volume, entitled Governance by Indicators: Global Power through Quantification, and a piece on the professional marginalization of public interest lawyers in the US, forthcoming in Law & Social Inquiry.

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