Dissertation: Working to Love: Expertise and Effort in Young U.S. Elites’ Romantic Relationships
Research Areas: Sex & Gender; Sexualities; Economic Sociology; Culture; Science, Knowledge, and Technology
Fields of Interest: Feminist and Queer Theory, Elites, Status, Intimate Life, Work, Reproduction, Contemporary Literature and Literary Publics
Adora Svitak is a doctoral candidate in the joint PhD program in Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her interdisciplinary sociology bridges interests in gender, sexuality, power, and various forms of capital. In her research, she investigates experiences at the nexus of attachment, pleasure, and structure. Her dissertation, “Working to Love: Expertise and Effort in Young U.S. Elites’ Romantic Relationships,” uses qualitative methods to examine the intimate lives of elite professionals (ages 24-40) without children. This work explores relational dynamics as they are interlinked with labor, desire, and class distinction. It brings a critical lens to a status group that often goes unmarked yet has the disproportionate ability to influence norms; it is also a generational cohort that is not always captured by operationalizations of “elite” (e.g., ultra high net worth) that privilege older adults. Adora is the coordinator of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies’ Graduate Policy Fellowship. Her work has been published in Cultural Sociology, Post45, and the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition, Adora has extensive experience in the technology non-profit field; prior to Yale, she was at the Wikimedia Foundation and was a Visiting Fellow at the AI Now Institute in 2024.