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Recent Graduates and Placement
The interdisciplinary and intellectual breadth of Michigan sociology creates employment opportunities for our PhDs across the academia and beyond. Our PhDs work not only in sociology departments, but in business schools, public policy schools, social work, and law schools. A number of our graduates have launched careers working for government agencies, non-profit organizations, or the private sector. The international focus of our department also positions our PhDs to work in both academic and non-academic positions around the globe. Our PhDs often spend time after graduation in prestigious postdoctoral appointments in the United States and abroad.
Some of the Different Paths Taken by Our Alumni
Sociology Depts at Research Institutions
Lloyd Grieger - Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University (Ph.D. 2010). Research Interests - poverty and social policy, family, quantitative methods.
Angel L. Harris - Associate Professor of Sociology at Princeton University (Ph.D. 2005). Research Interests - sociology of education, race & ethnicity, stratification & inequality, qualitative methods
Emily A. Kazyak - Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Nebraska (Ph.D. 2010). Research Interests - sexuality, identity, law & society, gender, family, Lesbian, Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies.
Alexandra A. Killewald - Assistant Professor of Sociology at Harvard University (Ph.D. 2011). Research Interests - work-family labor, stratification, demography
Anthony Perez - Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D. 2006). Research Interests - demography, quantitative methods, race, ethnicity & immigration, social stratification & mobility
Academic Placements in Related Disciplines
Christopher Marquis - Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University (Ph.D. 2005). Research Interests - organizational behavior, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, economic sociology, environment, and social entrepreneurship.
Christopher N.J. Roberts - Associate Professor of Law at University of Minnesota. (Ph.D. 2010). Research Interests - human rights, international law, legal history, consitutional law, qualitative research methods, civil rights.
Kristin Scherrer - Assistant Professor of Social Work at Rutgers University. (Ph.D. 2011). Research Interests - aging and the lifecourse, family relationships, sexualities, gender, clinical practice, qualitative methodologies
Kristin Seefeldt - Assistant Professor of Social Work & Adjunct Assistant Research Scientist of Public Policy at University of Michigan. (Ph.D. 2010). Research Interests - poverty and low-income families, housing instability, implementation of programs serving low-income families.
Liberal Arts Colleges
Kristie A. Ford - Assistant Professor of Sociology at Skidmore College (Ph.D. 2006). Research Interests - qualitative methodology, race and ethnicity, black identity, gender and sexuality, social inequality.
Helen K. Kim - Assistant Professor of Sociology at Whitman College (Ph.D. 2005). Research Interests - race and ethnicity, Asian Americans; American Jews, qualitative methods.
Government
Eric Eide - Presidential Management Fellow at US Small Business Administration (Ph.D. 2011). Specialties - globalization, emerging markets, technology transfer, public-private partnerships, outsourcing, organizational theory.
Melissa Forbes - Strategic Risk Specialist at the US Department of Homeland Security (Ph.D. 2010). Specialties - climate change adaptation, homeland security rick management, strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, policy development, organizational theory, corporate governance, economic sociology, curriculum development.
International Institutions
Baris Buyukokutan - Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boganzici University in Turkey. (Ph.D. 2010). Research Interests - intellectuals, the production of culture, habitus and subjectivity, art and literature, religion, historical methods.
Haijing Dai - Assistant Professor of Social Work at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. (Ph.D. 2010). Research Interests - community organizing and development, state and civil society, poverty and social inequality, resistance and collective action, welfare policies and social services, reforms and contentions in post-socialist China, ethnography.
Postdoctoral Appointments
Tiffany Joseph - Robert Woods Johnson Foundation Health Policy Scholar at Harvard University (Ph.D. 2011). Research Interests - race, ethnicity, and immigration; Latin American and Caribbean Studies; research methods; experiences of faculty of color in academia; immigrants' mental health and healthcare access.
Jonathan Zelner - Postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, and a postdoctoral fellow in the NIH Fogarty International Center Research and Policy for Infectious Disease Dynamics (RAPIDD) program. (Ph.D. 2011) Research Interests - infectious disease transmission, particularly interested in the interaction between human social systems and infectious disease dynamics.
Colter Mitchell - Postdoctoral research associate in the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University. (Ph.D. 2009). Research Interests - social demography, sociology of the family, biosocial interactions, population health, statistics, survey methods, sociology of religion.
Zakiya Luna - Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin (2011-12), In 2012-13 will be a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. (Ph.D. 2011). Research Interests - reproductive justice movements and the intersecting politics of race and sexuality in controversies around reproduction.
