Research Scholars

Jamie M. Carroll is a Sociologist who studies stratification, education, mental and physical health, political engagement, and adolescent development. Her work investigates the ways in which institutions stratify individual outcomes across the life course by empowering some and disengaging others. Her work has been published in Social Forces, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Psychological Science, The Journal of Higher Education, Sociological Perspectives, JAMA Open, and Social Science Research. She has also published work in The Huffington Post, EdWeek, and the Austin-American Statesman. Her dissertation, "Sustaining a Nonrepresentative Democracy: How Education Shapes Long-term Voting Patterns" was selected as a semifinalist for the National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship and was nominated for an Outstanding Dissertation Award at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently the Associate Director for Research at the Education Research Alliance of New Orleans in the Department of Economics at Tulane University.

Jordan Conwell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Affiliate of the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. His research primarily focuses on racial, social class, and gender inequality in education, families, and finances. Additional scholarly interests include research methods and the sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois. His research has appeared in journals including Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Forces, and Sociology of Education and has been funded by Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowships from the National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation. He also engages with public and policy audiences about topics related to his research. Recent writing for research-based, non-partisan organizations includes EconoFact. Recent speaking includes Texas Instruments and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He completed a Ph.D. in Sociology at Northwestern University in 2017. 

Dr. Christy L. Erving is an Associate Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin, faculty research associate in the Population Research Center, and faculty affiliate in the Center on Aging and Population Sciences. Using theories, concepts, and perspectives from various disciplines, her program of research focuses on clarifying and explaining status distinctions in health. Her primary research areas explore how race, ethnicity, gender, and immigrant status intersect to produce health differentials; the Black–White mental health paradox; and how status (e.g., gender) shapes the relationship between psychological and physical health. Her research has appeared in Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Society and Mental Health, Journal of Marriage and Family, American Journal of Epidemiology, among others.

She received a B.A. in Sociology and Hispanic Studies at Rice University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington. 

Dr. Carlton J. Fong is a faculty member in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Texas State University. Dr. Fong received his doctorate in educational psychology with an emphasis on human development, culture, and learning sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. As a scholar-activist at the intersection of educational psychology and higher education, Dr. Fong uses a sociocultural lens to study motivational and affective factors influencing postsecondary student outcomes. He leverages quantitative methods to explore asset-based approaches related to psychosocial factors in educational contexts.

Dr. Nancy López is professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. Dr. López directs and co-founded the Institute for the Study of "Race" and Social Justice (race.unm.edu). Dr. López's scholarship, teaching and service is guided by the insights of intersectionality --the importance of examining race, gender, class, ethnicity together--for interrogating inequalities across a variety of social outcomes, including education, health, employment, housing, and developing contextualized solutions that advance social justice. Dr. López is the first woman of color tenured in the Sociology department and the first woman of the African Diaspora (AfroLatina/Black Latina) tenured in the College of Arts and Sciences (2008) and promoted to full professor (2018) at UNM.

Dr. Shannon Malone Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Fellow in the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research examines the relationship between marginality and policing. She is especially interested in how black women and girls experience, understand, and resist police surveillance and violence. Drawing from black feminism and critical criminology, Shannon uses mixed methods to investigate the social conditions that shape and obscure black women and girls’ experiences of policing across social institutions and contexts. 

Shannon earned her B.A. from Tougaloo College and M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from The University of Texas at Austin where she also completed doctoral portfolios in Applied Statistical Modeling and Women’s and Gender Studies. 

Dr. Karisma Morton is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education. Her research explores racial inequity in STEM education with a focus on mathematics education and has two strands of inquiry. In the first, she explores factors influencing minoritized students’ opportunities to learn rigorous mathematics through quantitative analyses of large-scale district and national datasets. In the second, she explores elementary preservice teachers’ ability to teach mathematics in equitable ways, particularly through the development of their critical racial consciousness. Findings from her research have been published in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education and Educational Researcher.

Anthony A. Peguero is a professor of sociology and criminology in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics and School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University and the director of the Laboratory for the Study of Youth Inequality and Justice. His research interests involve youth violence, socialization and marginalization, schools, and the adaptation of the children immigrants. Professor Peguero is also a member of Latina/o/x Criminology and Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network and which both hold the goals of advancing research on the intersection of race, crime, equity, and justice.  Professor Peguero’s research focuses on youth violence, socialization and marginalization, education, and the adaptation of the children immigrants. Overarching themes in his research include: to highlight the barriers and challenges faced by the children of immigrants; to demonstrate how social inequality is central for sociological and criminological theories toward understanding and addressing youth violence; to explore how the intersection of race/ethnicity, immigration, and gender in relationship to youth marginalization, particularly within schools; and, to investigate policies intended to promote safety and equity for youth.

Purnamrita (Purna) Sarkar joined The University of Texas at Austin in 2014 as an assistant professor. Previously, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, jointly in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the Department of Statistics. She works on large-scale statistical machine learning problems with a focus on statistical models, asymptotic theory, and scalable inference algorithms for large networks. Along with investigators across campus, Sarkar co-leads the NSF TRIPODS (Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science) grant to establish a new institute on the Foundations of Data Science at UT Austin.

Dr. Sarkar earned her Ph.D. in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University in 2010.

Edward Vargas' primary areas of interest are the effects of poverty and inequality on the quality of life, focusing specifically on health, immigration status and social policy, and how these factors contribute to the well-being of vulnerable families. In addition, poverty and inequality are strongly tied to race and ethnicity; thus, he is also interested in the methodological issues involved in the quantitative study of race and ethnicity. 

To address these issues, Vargas has developed two programs of research. The first examines how anti-immigrant climate is impacting Latina/o health.  A second area research examines methodological issues in the quantitative research on race and ethnicity among Latina/o populations.  He is a Co-PI on the 2015 Latino National Health and Immigration Survey and Co-PI on the 2016 and 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) which is funded by the National Science Foundation. As a leading expert on health policy and Latino politics, he regularly provides political commentary to several state, national, and international media outlets including the Washington Post, NBC News, Univision, and Brookings Institution.  

Dr. Tauheeda Yasin is an ACLS Community Engagement Postdoctoral Fellow with the Initiative for Law, Societies, and Justice at The University of Texas at Austin. She is actively involved in the Home to Texas (H2TX) project on judicial decision-making, funded by an Arnold Ventures grant, and other research initiatives in the Austin area. Dr. Yasin is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research is at the intersection of social inequality, policy, and justice. Through community engagement and data analysis, she brings a unique perspective to issues related to legal system change.

She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University, along with an M.S. in Education, and a B.A. in Liberal Arts (Public Policy and Film concentrations) from Sarah Lawrence College.