The doctoral program in sociology prepares students for careers in research and teaching. While most of our graduates teach in colleges and universities, others hold research appointments in government agencies, medical and mental health centers, consulting firms, or other non-profit or research settings.
Class of 2017
Current Placement: Research Associate, Urban Institute, Washington, DC
Dissertation: “The Causes and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence and Urban Neighborhoods.”
Current Placement: Director, Education Studies, Yale University
Current Placement: Community Resilience Building Program Organizer, Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area.
Dissertation: “The imperial Citizenship Project: Constitutional Ottomanism in the Nineteenth Century.”
Dissertation: “Religious Exclusivists Taking Inclusive Action: Theorizing Exclusivist Practice in Muslim-Christian Relations.”
Current Placement: Chancellor’s Professor Law/Faculty Affiliate with African American Studies and Jurisprudence and Social Policy, University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
Dissertation: “The Trauma of Till and Trayvon”
Current Placement: Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
Dissertation: “Anticolonial Labor Movements and the Postcolonial Totalitarian State: Indian Coffee House from Independence to Emergency, 1947-1977”
Class of 2016
Sorcha Brophy, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pittsburgh, Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
Dissertation: “Making Morals: Standard-Setting in Organizations”
Shai Dromi, Ph.D. Current Placement: Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Harvard University Dissertation: “The Religious Origins of Transnational Relief: Calvinism, Humanitarianism, and the Genesis of Social Fields.”
Current Placement: Visiting Lecturer, Mount Holyoke Colege
Dissertation: “Schooling as a Social Process: Creation and Consequence of Adolescent Society in American High Schools.”
Jensen Sass, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra
Dissertation: “Remaking Monsanto: Commodification as Corporate Strategy”
Current Placement: Associate Strategist, Fresh Squeezed Ideas, Toronto
Dissertation: “The Cultural Logic of Heritage Redevelopment Mega-Projects: The Distillery District in Toronto and Cheonggyecheon in Seoul.”
Gulay Turkmen-Dervisoglu, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Göttingen, Germany
Dissertation: “United in Religion, Divided by Ethnicity? Why Islam Fails as A Supranational Identity in Turkey”
Yingyao Wang, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia
Initial Placement: Watson Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Dissertation: “The Gradual Revolution: Economic Ideas, Organizational Trajectories and Policy Elites in Contemporary China (1979-2014)”
Class of 2015
Seongsoo Choi, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Postdoctoral Researcher, Sociology and Social Demography, University of Oxford
Initial Placement: Assistant Professor of Sociology, Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia
Dissertation: “Educational Choice and Institutional Contexts: Three Essays on Educational Stratification in Comparative Perspective”
Current Placement: Assistant Professor, Royal Danish Defense College, Cophenhagen, Denmark
Initial Placement: Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Center for Research on Military Organization, University of Maryland
Dissertation: “Democratic Oversight and Military Autonomy: The U.S. Army’s Management of American Journalism, 1939-2004”
Alison Gerber, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Postdoctoral Researcher, Lund University, Sweden
Dissertation: ”Art Work?: Employment, Markets, and Valuation in the Visual Arts”
Joseph Klett, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz, CA
Dissertation: “The Social Life of Noise”
Current Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, Reed College, Portland Oregon
Dissertation: “Generating Education Inequality: Multidimensional Approaches to the Transmission of Advantage and Disadvantage.”
Carolyn Ly, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Assistant Professor of Sociology, Augustana College Sioux Falls, SD
Dissertation: “Meaning and Merit in American Municipal Firefighting”
Elizabeth Roberto, Ph.D.
Current Placement: James S. McDonnell Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Studying Complex Systems, Princeton University
Dissertation: “The Boundaries of Spatial Inequality: Three Essays on the Measurement and Analysis of Residential Segregation”
Sandy Zhao, Ph.D. Current Placement: Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State Dissertation: “Justice, Law, and the Elite Student Experience in Russian and American Legal Education.”
Class of 2014
Current Placement: Lead Organizer, Local 34, Yale
Jeffrey Guhin, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Assistant Professor of Sociology, UCLA
Initial Placement: Abd el-Kader Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia
Dissertation: “Moral Technology: Science, Religion, and Right Action in in Evangelical and Sunni Schools”
Natalie Nitsche, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Postdoctoral Associate, Vienna Institute of Demography
Dissertation: “A Couple Perspective on Fertility Outcomes: Do Relative Resources Matter for First and Second Births in the US and Germany?”
Xiaohong Xu, Ph.D.
Current Placement: Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore
Dissertation: “Revolutionizing Ethos: Powers of Organization in the Chinese Revolution”