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Doctoral Fellows for 2007-2008 The program selects 8-12 new Doctoral Fellows each year from the participating Harvard Ph.D. programs. Doctoral Fellows join the program in their second or third year and maintain their affiliation through the dissertation stage.
P r o f i l e s Sam Abrams (Government, G5) Marcus Alexander (Government, G4)
Weihua An (Sociology, G2)
Christopher Bail (Sociology, G5)
Lucy Barnes (Political Economy & Government, G4)
Elias Bruegmann (Economics, G6)
Anmol Chaddha (Sociology & Social Policy, G2)
Jacqueline Chattopadhyay (Government & Social Policy, G3).
Victor Chen (Sociology & Social Policy, G5)
Hanley Chiang (Economics, G5)
Jacqueline Cooke-Rivers (African and African-American Studies, G2)
Porsha Cropper (Government & Social Policy, G2)
David Deming (Public Policy, G3)
Jeff Denis (Sociology, G4)
Michael Fortner (Government & Social Policy, G7)
Ethan Fosse (Sociology, G4)
Nathan Fosse (Sociology, G5)
Benjamin Goodrich (Government & Social Policy, G5)
Sarah Halpern-Meekin (Sociology & Social Policy, G4)
Seth D. Hannah (Sociology, G8)
Tarek Alexander Hassan (Economics, G4)
Michael Henderson (Government & Social Policy, G2)
Bert Huang (Economics, G5)
Elisabeth Jacobs (Sociology, G7)
Felipe Kast (Public Policy, G4)
Noam Kirson (Economics, G5)
Jason Lakin (Government & Social Policy, G5)
Therese Leung (Sociology, G6)
Victoria Levin (Public Policy, G3)
David Mericle (Economics, G3)
Holly Ming (Public Policy, G4)
Joshua Mitchell (Economics, G3)
Kirk Moore (Economics, G4)
Ryan Moore (Government & Social Policy, G6)
Ann Owens (Sociology & Social Policy, G3)
Sabrina Pendergrass (Sociology, G6)
Melanie Penny (Sociology & Social Policy, G5)
Sanjay Pinto (Sociology & Social Policy, G3)
Brenna Marea Powell (Government & Social Policy, G4)
Juan E. Saavedra (Public Policy, G5)
Daniel Schlozman (Government & Social Policy, G5)
Daniel Schrage (Sociology, G3)
Judith Scott-Clayton (Public Policy, G5)
David Seif (Economics, G4)
Francis Shen (Government & Social Policy, G7)
Daniel Shoag (Economics, G2)
Graziella Silva (Sociology, G5)
Sandip Sukhtankar (Political Economy & Government, G4)
Jennifer Sykes-McLaughlin (Sociology and Social Policy, G5)
Laura Tach (Sociology & Social Policy, G4)
Van Tran (Sociology & Social Policy, G4)
Zoua M. Vang (Sociology, G7)
Tom Vogl (Economics, G2)
Jessica Welburn (Sociology, G5)
Scott Winship (Sociology & Social Policy, G8)
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Sam Abrams is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government and is a research fellow with the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. He is also a tutor in Cabot House. He has written on issues of school choice, educational testing, federalism, voting, public opinion and electoral behavior. His current work focuses on the role of money in elections, partisanship and American political culture. He has just published a series of op-eds dealing with religion, morality, and values in the electorate in response to the 2004 Presidential election. His dissertation deals with the rationale for voting in comparative perspective. A native of Philadelphia and a graduate of Stanford University, Sam enjoys star-gazing, wine tasting, outdoor sports (i.e. things that one would do in national parks), Stanford sports, and the Boston Red Sox in his leisure time. 
Marc Alexander studies inequality in health economics and politics. His fields of research include political economy, econometrics and political methodology, and behavioral economics. He is a member of Gary King's research group at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, where he has worked on panel data models, Bayesian forecasting, survey design, and field experiments. Prior to coming to Harvard, he received a BA from Yale in Political Science and Molecular Biology, and an MPhil from Oxford in Politics. He worked as a journalist for Reuters in London and CBS Evening News in Washington, D.C., and consulted on policy for CSIS, the European Commission, and the UK Department for International Development. 
Weihua is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. He has received quantitative training in game theory, econometrics, nonparametric statistics, stochastic process, time series analysis, etc., and is proficient in programming in R, Stata, Eviews, Gauss and Matlab. He is very interested in applying formal modeling techniques and statistical analysis into the fields of medical sociology, economic sociology, and organizational studies. 
Christopher A. Bail is currently completing his 5th year of the PhD Program in Sociology at Harvard University. His dissertation compares the uses of collective memory of terrorism in the reform of "philosophies of integration" in the U.S. and U.K. His previous research on the "configuration" of symbolic boundaries between natives and immigrants in twenty-one European countries has appeared in the 
Lucy Barnes grew up in the UK, and received her BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Trinity College, Oxford in 2003. After spending a year teaching in France, joined the Political Economy and Government program in 2004. Her research interests focus on the comparative political economy of the advanced democracies, and the interaction between economic inequality and political institutions in the determination of government policy. As a member of Harvard’s ultimate Frisbee team, Lucy spends much of her spare time chasing a plastic disc around a field. 
Elias is currently in his sixth year of the Harvard economics department's PhD program. He took his oral exams in the fields of labor and industrial organization, but he is currently working on projects that would probably be described as labor and urban economics. His current work includes studying the effect of labor market size on human capital acquisition, the labor market return to social capital, and the rise of gentrification. He is immensely proud of the sophomore tutorial he developed last year on what he calls the economics of place. This class covered topics like migration, housing markets and city structure. When he is not studying economics, Elias enjoys biking, reading, running, and exploring New England. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Chicago.
Anmol Chaddha earned a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002. He has worked at several policy institutes in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, doing research to support grassroots organizing and policy development around issues of racial and economic justice. In his policy career, he worked to establish living wage laws, increase local minimum wage levels, expand workers' access to health care, and improve the quality of jobs in low-wage industries. Anmol has also examined the impact of post-9/11 national security policies on immigrant communities, and he has conducted research on the structure of informal work in New York City. His academic interests include low-wage work, immigrant workers, and the politics of race and economic development in American cities. 
Jacqueline received her B.A. in Political Science and Economics from the University of California, Irvine in 2005. She is interested in the intersection of public policy, media content, and public opinion in the U.S., particularly in the area of health politics and policy. Her dissertation research will focus on individual-level opinions of U.S. health insurance schemes. Her other academic interests include welfare state expansion and retrenchment, racial and ethnic inequality, and the politics of U.S. food and drug policy. She has interned for California elected officials, the National Education Association, and the Center for American Progress think tank. Whenever able to escape from work, she enjoys dancing, running, and exploring unfamiliar cities on foot. 
Victor studies poverty, development, globalization, and social movements. With Katherine S. Newman he co-authored 
Hanley Chiang received his B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from the
College of William and Mary in 2003. His research examines the impact of
public school accountability on student achievement, as well as the
design of incentive schemes to reward teacher performance. He has taught
English in the Palestinian West Bank and has worked at the Center for
Global Development in Washington, DC. Outside of academic work, Hanley
enjoys volunteering at a soup kitchen, tutoring at a local high school,
hiking, and reading about politics and history.
Porsha graduated from Stanford University in 2005 where she majored in Political Science and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Her senior thesis analyzed the psychological and political determinants of African American
perceptions of racial group threat from Latinos in Los Angeles and Compton. Since graduation, Porsha worked as a research assistant in the Metropolitan Policy and Economic Studies division of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. She has worked on several projects ranging from policy proposals on the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to issues focusing on antipoverty policies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit in urban
communities. She also worked with Dr. Alice Rivlin on her new upcoming book on the crisis of rising health care expenditures and the politics of Medicare. Currently, Porsha’s research interests focus on the ways in which the socio-economic and political contexts of neighborhoods create and/or prevent opportunities for conflict and coalition building among different racial and ethnic groups in multiethnic cities and suburban areas. Outside of school,
Porsha’s hobbies include dancing, shopping, and watching the food network.
David Deming is a third-year doctoral student in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, concentrating in applied microeconomics, econometrics, and program evaluation. His primary area of interest is education policy, particularly early childhood and K-12 education. He is currently working on a paper about the long-term benefits of participation in Head Start. He is also working on a paper about the causes and consequences of racial resegregation and school choice in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system. His other research interests include the lengthening of childhood, the role of non-cognitive skill development in K-12 education and the effect of non-cognitive skills on college persistence. He holds a B.S. in economics and a B.A. in political science from The Ohio State University, and an M.P.P. from the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California-Berkeley. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, bicycling and watching his beloved Ohio State Buckeyes dominate the Big Ten. 
Jeff Denis received his B.A. in Sociology and Psychology from the University of Toronto in 2004. At Harvard, he is a Knox Fellow and a SSHRC doctoral fellow. His academic interests include organizational change, race and ethnic relations, inequalities in health, and healthy social policy. Jeff's past research focused on the restructuring of Ontario's health care system and the transformation and closure of the Wellesley Hospital in downtown Toronto. He is co-author of 
Michael Javen Fortner received his BA in Political Science and African-American studies from Emory University in 2001. Currently, Michael is a PhD Student in the Government Department at Harvard University and a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy. His work studies the intersection of American political development and political philosophy -- particularly in the areas of race, ethnicity, and class. His dissertation, "Must Difference Divide?: The Institutional Roots of Racial Politics," compares the development of racial politics in London and New York. Marshalling historical evidence and over-time data on non-white associations, his project examines the relationship between state structures and patterns of non-white political activism. In fall 2005, Michael was a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics. He has been awarded fellowships or grants from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Aspen Institute, the Center for American Political Studies, the American Political Science Association, and the Mortar Board Honor Society. He has also received a Certificate of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching and has been a nominee for the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize. 
Ethan Fosse received his B.A. in Sociology from the University of Kansas in 2004, with Honors and Distinction. Prior to coming to Harvard, he worked at Kansas Legal Services, Inc. to create and implement a legal needs survey of nearly seven hundred low-income and disadvantaged Kansans. From these results he co-wrote a policy paper and in 2004 received the Undergraduate Research Award from the University of Kansas. In addition, in 2003 he worked as an urban ethnographer at the University of California, Los Angeles for a multi-year project on public spaces funded by the National Science Foundation. Ethan's research interests include the intergenerational transmission of inequality as well as organizational aspects of inequality. In his spare time he plays the bass guitar and composes music.
Nathan Fosse is a graduate student in sociology and he received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Kansas State University. Currently, he is working on the areas of health and poverty. His past projects have included the following: 1) a qualitative study of the meaning of sexual infidelity among low-income men, 2) a qualitative study of low-income men's prospective attitudes toward fatherhood, 3) a longitudinal secondary analysis of adolescent health and educational outcomes, 4) a longitudinal secondary analysis of cultural capital and elite college attainment. Future and current projects include: 1) the causal effect of involvement in music classes on cognitive ability, 2) a comparison of health inequalities in Sweden and the UK, 3) the relationship between mortality and income in the United States. Nathan also has taught courses in social theory, sociology of culture, and medical sociology. In addition to teaching, he has served as a thesis advisor to undergraduate students in social studies.
Ben Goodrich graduated from Emory University in 2001 with a master's degree in political science and a bachelor's degree in political science and economics (just for fun, he finished the requirements for a philosophy major as well). Since college, he has worked at the Institute for International Economics, which is a well-respected "think tank" in Washington D.C. that researches international economic policy. While in Washington, Ben made a name for himself by analyzing the steel industry in the United States and also researched the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In graduate school, Ben plans to study the ways in which developed countries adjust to globalization and in particular, how governments meet the needs of workers whose job security is threatened by globalization. In addition, he is interested in multilateral economic institutions and quantitative methodology. Ben grew up in Dallas
and spends too much of his spare time following Dallas' professional sports teams. He will always be a fan of '80s rock music. For more information about Ben, see his webpage: 
Sarah's research interests focus on family structure, adolescence, and marriage/divorce. Her dissertation examines the intergenerational transmission of understandings of marriage/divorce and relationship skills for adolescents. Additionally, her dissertation will offer a preliminary look at the impact on teens of exposure to relationship-skills and marriage promotion curricula in high schools. 
Seth Hannah, a native of Southern California, received his B.A. Summa Cum Laude from the University of California, Riverside in 1998 with a joint major in Ethnic Studies and Sociology and a minor in Political Science. After working for two years as a substitute teacher and freelance graphic designer, Seth came to Harvard to start his Ph.D. in Sociology in the year 2000. Seth's academic interests are in the intersection of racial inequality and public policy, with a particular focus on racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care. His dissertation is a study of multiculturalism in the organizational culture of three psychiatric hospitals in the Boston area. Seth also holds a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) at the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and is entering his fourth year as a Tutor in Currier House.
Tarek Hassan’s research interests include development economics, political economy, and macroeconomic theory. Currently he is studying the Holocaust’s lasting impact on European political and economic institutions and the economic consequences of genocide. He also works on macroeconomic issues, such as the social cost of excessively volatile stock markets. Tarek received his undergraduate Diplom in economics from Mannheim University in Germany in 2004. He has studied and worked at the University of California, Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and at Humboldt University, Berlin. He is now a doctoral student at Harvard’s economics department. Homepage: 
Mike Henderson graduated with honors in 2001 from Louisiana State University, where he earned a BA in Political Science and a BS in Animal, Dairy and Poultry Science, which he followed with a MA in Political Science in 2003. He then joined Teach for America and served for two years as a special education teacher in a low income community. During this time he had the privilege of teaching the most amazing group of children in the world. He has spent the last year conducting research in education policy for the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana. His current research interest is school reform that expands educational opportunity. Though he may be sixteen hundred miles from home, Mike continues to cheer on his beloved Fightin’ Tigers of LSU as loudly and obnoxiously as ever. He spends the rest of his spare time daydreaming about home-cooked south Louisiana gumbo. 
Bert served as a staff economist with the President's Council of Economic Advisers in 1998-1999, following graduate study at Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship. He received his A.B. from Harvard and also completed his J.D. at Harvard Law School, where he served as President (editor-in-chief) of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he was a law clerk for Chief Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He now continues his studies as a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Harvard; his research interests include employment law and labor market discrimination, as well as empirical analysis of legal procedure and legal interpretation.
Elisabeth aims to utilize the vast array of tools available to social
scientists in order to inform and influence policy and politics. Her
research interests embrace a wide array of questions addressing the issue of
economic security: Do Americans face more economic risk today than they have
in the past? If so, why, and what are the consequences of this increased
risk burden for families, communities, and the polity? How have social
welfare policy decisions over the last half-century contributed to these
trends? Prior to beginning graduate work at Harvard, Elisabeth spent several
years in New York City conducting policy research and advocacy on a wide
range of domestic and local policy issues. She graduated magna cum laude,
Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University with bachelor's degrees in American
Studies and Gender Studies. A political junkie, she runs marathons and reads
cookbooks, fiction, the New Yorker, the New Republic and just about whatever
else comes her way. Elisabeth is a co-founder and co-director of New Vision,
a
domestic policy think tank that seeks to engage the next generation of
scholars in developing the policy proposals and broader visions that will
be needed to create widespread opportunity and security in the next
century.
Felipe Kast his B.A. and M.A. in economics at the Catholic University of
Chile. In 2000 he spend one year at the University of La Havana, Cuba,
where he studied sociology and political economy. As a fourth year PhD
candidate in Public Policy Felipe is working in three different projects.
His first paper introduces a family of intertemporal poverty measures
derived from commonly used static poverty measures. A welfare criterion that
generates a partial ordering of income processes is introduced once the
growth sensitivity axiom is assumed. The second project is a field
experiment about microsavings in the poor neighborhood of Chile. The project
is conducted in association with Banco de Chile and Fondo Esperanza (MFI). A
pilot is going to be implemented in Fall 2007 before the experiment with
5000 clients starts in March 2008. The third project is aimed to evaluate
the causal effects of the generous Chilean public housing subsidies. The
identification strategy flows directly from the design of the Chilean
housing subsidy. In Chile, housing subsidies are assigned using a "score
card" computed from several dimension. Applicants are not informed about the
cutoff point ex ante and the cutoff changes every year. This feature allows
the use of a regression discontinuity identification strategy in order to
evaluate the impact of the subsidy. 
Noam Kirson is a fifth year Ph.D. student in the economics department, focusing
on public finance, public policy and political economy. After serving 7 years
in the Israeli Air Force, he earned his bachelor's degree in Political Science,
Philosophy and Economics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2003. Noam’s
recent research has looked at intergenerational transfers of wealth and
their motivations, and is currently exploring cross-country differences in
health outcomes and their relation to labor market stress.
Jason Lakin graduated from Brown University in 1998 with a BA in History. He then spent several years in Washington, DC where he co-authored a book on comparative democracy with Seymour Martin Lipset, 
Therese Leung graduated with her B.A. in mathematics from Wellesley College in 1998. After college, she worked as a management consultant before switching careers and obtaining her Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government in 2001. Her master’s thesis was entitled, “Building Assets for Women: A Guide to Designing Individual Development Accounts for Low-Income Women.” She finally left Boston to work as a fiscal policy analyst for the White House in Washington, DC where she was responsible for making recommendations regarding the funding of federal economic assistance and social service programs like EITC and subsidized child care. Her wide range of research interests includes the study of gender inequality, poverty, the effects of the legalization of abortion, and the evolving family structure. Therese ran in the 2003 San Francisco Marathon and can frequently be spotted running along the Charles River. She's happy to return back to Cambridge, although she often admits missing the exciting and tumultuous sport of politics. 
Victoria Levin is currently in her third year of a Ph.D. in Public Policy. She received her B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University in 2000. She also received a Master's degree in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Kennedy School of Government in 2003. Before coming back to the Kennedy School for a Ph.D., Victoria worked at the World Bank on issues of foreign aid, poverty, and international inequality. Her primary research interests include topics in public economics and labor economics in developing countries. Currently, she is investigating the tradeoffs between cash transfers and in-kind benefits, using as a case study the recent benefit monetization reform in Russia. In her spare time, Victoria enjoys seeing the world, reading fiction, and attending live music events. 
David is originally from Madison, Wisconsin. He received an AB in Economics and History and AM in Statistics from Harvard College in 2005. Currently, he is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics at Harvard. His research interests include development, international trade and finance, and political economy, and he also teaches a course on the history of economic thought. 
Holly Ming is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Public Policy. She received her undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard College, where her research focused on the economics of education. Before joining the Kennedy School, she spent a year as a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research, working on projects related to pension plans. Her current research interests include public finance, in particular education finance and social security; and labor economics, such as domestic economic migration and male-female wage inequality. She is from Hong Kong and she would love to conduct some research on China's social and labor issues. Holly directed an afterschool program in Boston's Chinatown, and especially enjoys working with children and researching on children-related topics.
Josh Mitchell received his B.A./B.S. in economics and
mathematics from Stanford University in 2005. He
spent a summer at the Congressional Budget Office
working to develop a forecast of the growth in
personal medical expenditures before beginning his
Kirk Moore is currently a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Department of
Economics at Harvard. He received a Bachelor of Science in Computer
Science from Northwestern University in 2002. Prior to Harvard, Kirk spent two years at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco working as a
research assistant in the Macroeconomic Research group. Kirk's research 
Ryan T. Moore studies American social policy and statistical methods.
In particular, he is working on the interaction between direct
democracy and redistribution through pensions, interstate antipoverty
policy variation, federalism, methods for the design of policy
experiments, and causal inference from quantitative data. Ryan
received a B.A. from Yale in Political Science and Mathematics, and an
A.M. from Harvard in Statistics. He spent several years before
graduate school teaching high school mathematics, and also contributed
to the Welfare Reform and Beyond project at the Brookings Institution
in Washington, DC.
Ann Owens received her BA in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2004. Ann worked at the Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work at the University of Chicago before beginning the Sociology and Social Policy program at Harvard. Her academic interests center around education and the family, and her qualifying paper examines neighborhood effects on adolescents' aspirations and expectations for the future. She has written on such topics as Hispanic education, the educational consequences of adolescents' experiences of stereotyping in the classroom, how working families spend time at home, how family structure affects child outcomes, and the transition from adolescence to adulthood with respect to educational and occupational goal attainment.
Sabrina Pendergrass received an A.B. in Sociology and a Certificate in
African-American Studies from Princeton University in June 2002. She
received her Master's in Sociology degree from Harvard in June 2006.
Sabrina's research interests are cultural sociology, race and ethnicity,
inequality, and internal migration. She is currently living in Charlotte,
NC doing fieldwork for her dissertation on the reversal of the African
American Great Migration.
Melanie Rose Penny hails from Compton, CA, and has arrived at Harvard
after spending five years on the Stanford University farm. She received
her bachelor's degree in Political Science in 2002, and spent the
following year working as a research assistant in Stanford's Departments
of Communication and Psychology, studying a range of race-related
issues. Her senior thesis dealt with the effect of the news media on the
creation of criminal justice policy and the resultant disproportionate
confinement of African-American youth. While she has taken a hiatus from
studying media effects, she plans to return to this research agenda in
the near future. Melanie's many research interests revolve around the
issue of perception and the way in which popular perceptions can
significantly influence the content of social acts. Currently, she is
studying how perceptions of one's neighborhood may affect the quality of
life experienced within various neighborhood contexts. Although she is
most frequently consumed by the weight of pressing social issues, in her
lighter moments, Ms. Penny enjoys partaking of the comedic stylings and
social commentary of Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy (the early years).
Sanjay is a PhD Candidate in Sociology and Social Policy. His research interests include labor market inequality, the political economy of development, and racial and gender discrimination. He is currently conducting research on flexible/non-standard employment in Europe, with a focus on its implications for low-wage workers. Sanjay's past work experience includes time spent as a magazine reporter, a union researcher, and a political canvasser. He received a BA in Sociology from Amherst College, and a Master's in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. Sanjay enjoys running, yoga, dancing, spicy food, and engaging in collective action for good causes. 
Brenna Marea Powell received her A.B. in Comparative Studies in Race
and Ethnicity, with a minor in Political Science, from Stanford in
1999. Her undergraduate work focused on race and public policy in the
US, and after graduation she worked with the Stanford Center on
Conflict and Negotiation with grassroots peacebuilding projects in
Northern Ireland. She is interested in comparative racial politics,
Juan E. Saavedra is a PhD candidate in Public Policy. His primary fields of interest are labor economics, applied econometrics and economics of education. His current research explores the effects of tutoring and remedial education interventions on academic performance, time use and juvenile delinquency. Other research explores the causes of voucher heterogeneity, the mechanisms by which secondary school vouchers improve academic outcomes and its implications for the design of school choice policies, using evidence from a randomized natural experiment in Colombia. 
Daniel Schlozman received his A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard
College in 2003, and is now a G-4 in Government and Social Policy. His
dissertation asks when political parties and interest groups will 
Dan Schrage studies labor market discrimination, the spatial distribution of labor markets, and statistical methods aimed at improving research in these and other policy-related areas. He received his A.B. in computer science from Harvard in 2001, where he focused on computational economics. Before coming to graduate school, he spent four years doing research in artificial intelligence at a think tank in Cambridge. He is currently working on a project exploring the effects of a variety of hiring and recruitment practices on diversity in the managerial workforce. He is also examining the spatial mismatch hypothesis in urban labor markets. Dan grew up in the rural town of Salem, Illinois, then spent his adolescence trying to get his head around city life in downtown Phoenix. He was socialized at an early age into a lifelong passion for the St. Louis Cardinals, and in his spare time he enjoys spinning, producing, and dancing to the blips and bleeps of electronic music. 
Judy Scott-Clayton’s primary research fields are labor economics and public finance. Her current research focuses on higher education policy, and its role in addressing or exacerbating inequalities in educational attainment and labor market outcomes. She has published a paper with Professor Susan Dynarski examining the equity and efficiency costs of complexity in the federal system for student financial aid, and proposing strategies for simplification (
David Seif is currently in his fourth year of Harvard's Ph.D. economics
program. He graduated from MIT in 2004, where he received a Bachelor of
Science in economics. His research interests include public economics,
labor economics, and finance. He is currently studying social insurance
programs, particularly Social Security in the United States and the health
insurance systems of other countries. In addition, he is studying the
economics of national security. Outside of academic work, David enjoys
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Francis Shen is a seventh year Ph.D. student in Government and Social Policy, writing a dissertation on the costs of rape and sexual assault. He graduated from Harvard Law School, and is a licensed lawyer in Missouri. Francis is completing a book with Doug Kriner at Boston University on inequality and American war casualties. He has also performed extensive education policy research, and in 2007 co-authored a book, 
Daniel Shoag is in his second year of Harvard's PhD program in economics. He
graduated from Harvard college in 2006, with a concentration in economics with
a citation in Hebrew. His primary research interests include dynamic public
finance and monetary policy. Daniel has worked in economic consulting, for the
Bureau of Labor Statistics and for Harvard Business School. He and his wife
Lyndsay are originally from Cleveland, Ohio.
Graziella Silva received her B.A. in social sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ, 1998). She got her Masters degree in Anthropology and Sociology at the same university, graduating in 2000. Her Masters thesis, on the relationship between social sciences and public policies, was published as a book in Brazil in 2003. Between 2000 and 2003 Graziella taught at the State University in Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and conducted research on urban poverty, focusing on police abuse towards favela residents in Rio de Janeiro. In 2003 Graziella joined the Sociology PhD program at Harvard University. She wrote her qualification paper comparing race-based affirmative action in Brazil and South Africa, and is currently working on her dissertation project, which compares national, racial and class identities of black professionals in these two countries. In 2007, Graziella has also spent time in Lisbon, Portugal starting a research project on the meanings of race and of Luso-tropicalism within the Portuguese-speaking world.
Sandip grew up Mumbai (Bombay), India, but finished high school at Lester Pearson United World College in Victoria, Canada, and received his BA in economics from Swarthmore College. After graduating, he spent some time setting up a school in rural India, before working in the think-tank world - the Brookings Institution and the Center for Global Development—in Washington DC. Sandip's research interests include development, political economy, and behavioral economics. Currently, he is working on research projects on: the political economy of sugarcane pricing in Maharashtra, India; the effects of ownership structure of sugarcane mills on the socioeconomic outcomes of farmers in Tamil Nadu, India; and the effects of corruption on progressiveness in a large workfare program in India. When he's had too much of school, he relaxes in the pottery studio, on his bike, and on the squash court.
Jennifer graduated from James Madison College at Michigan State University with a BA in Social Relations and Psychology in 1999. The following two years found her at the University of York in Northern England, where she received her MA in Social Policy and Social Work and developed her interest in comparative social policy. Jennifer’s keen interest in child and family welfare has led her to undertake work relating to foster care, welfare-to-work, child support, child protection, and family independence initiatives. Recently, she has worked in the non-profit sector evaluating Michigan juvenile delinquency prevention initiatives and crime victims’ services. Outside of academia Jen enjoys traveling, photography, birding, and vegetarian cuisine. 
Laura received her B.A. with Honors in Sociology from the Pennsylvania State
University, where she also minored in Statistics and African American Studies.
Van is currently a PhD Student in the Joint Program in Sociology and
Social Policy at Harvard University. His research focuses on immigrant
incorporation (especially the immigrant second generation), intergroup
relations, social inequality and urban poverty. He is also a Doctoral
Fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy at
the Kennedy School of Government. At Harvard, he coordinates the Migration
and Immigrant Incorporation Workshop, an interdisciplinary platform for
graduate students and faculty members in the Greater Boston area to
circulate works-in-progress in order to elicit feedback and suggestions
for improving scholarly work. To date, his academic work has been
generously supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Paul & Daisy Soros Foundation for New Americans, the National Science
Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development.
Zoua graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in December 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and sociology. After taking a year and a half break from school to work at a non-profit research firm in Philadelphia, Zoua joined the sociology department at Harvard in fall 2001. Her research interests are in immigration, race & ethnic relations, stratification, crime & violence, and social policy. As part of the European Network on Inequality program Zoua spent two months in the Republic of Ireland in fall 2004, conducting research on the impact of immigration on Irish race and ethnic relations. Her interest in international migration has also led to other research and academic opportunities in Italy and the UK. Zoua's dissertation examines the trends, causes and consequences of spatial assimilation and residential segregation for racial and ethnic immigrants in Ireland and the United States.
Tom is a second year Ph.D. student in the economics department, with interests in the economics of development, health, and population. His past research, published in journals such as 
Jessica Welburn grew up in Iowa City, Iowa and received her B.A. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2004. She has spent time working on a number of research projects including the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (Douglas S. Massey and Camille Z. Charles), the Philadelphia Educational Longitudinal Study (Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr.) and The Child Development in the Context of Residential Education Project (Chapin Hall Center for Children). Currently, her research interests include racial and ethnic relations in the U.S. and the U.K., the sociology of the family, organizational analysis and qualitative methodology. She is working on her qualifying paper which compares how professional black women in London and Boston think about dating, marriage, and having children. She is also working with Professor Frank Dobbin (Department of Sociology, Harvard), Dr. Alexandra Kalev (Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of California at Berkeley) and several graduate students on a project examining the effectiveness of organizational diversity policies.
Scott is currently living in Washington D.C., writing his dissertation on the effects of single parenthood on child outcomes. He also serves as Senior Policy Advisor for Third Way: A Strategy Center for Progressives. Before joining Third Way, Scott served as the founding managing editor for 
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