Author: Jessica Urzúa

ASA Thematic Session: How Can Sociology Disrupt the Status Quo in U.S. Health Policy?

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, ConferencesLeave a comment

OOW members attending the 2026 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting may be interested in the following thematic session:

Session 20834: How Can Sociology Disrupt the Status Quo in U.S. Health Policy?

Saturday, August 8, 2:00–3:30 p.m.
Sheraton, Second Floor, Metropolitan Ballroom East

Description: Under the current presidential administration, we have seen significant threats to healthcare access, public health, and health promoting social policies in the U.S. Despite our discipline’s theoretical frameworks and methodological tools, sociologists have often ceded health policy leadership opportunities to adjacent fields. This session asks: How can sociologists more meaningfully impact health policy? What core sociological insights can animate research agendas to disrupt the status quo in health policy? How can we position existing scholarship and produce new knowledge to meet this political moment? This panel will feature scholars working across multiple areas to invite a conversation on how our discipline can catalyze change in health policy.

Presider: Emily Parker, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Moderator: Sorcha Brophy, Columbia University

Panelists:

  • Tiffany Joseph, Northeastern University
  • Jennifer Karas Montez, Syracuse University
  • Josh Pacewicz, Brown University
  • Megan Reynolds, University of Utah

Call for Proposals: Comparative Sociology of Public Administration Book Volume Conference

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, Calls for ProposalsLeave a comment

Organizers Erin Metz McDonnell (University of Notre Dame) and Josh Pacewicz (Brown University) invite chapter proposals for an edited volume on the Comparative Sociology of Public Administration.

The project will bring together scholars through two in-person mini-conferences:

  • Late Fall 2026: University of Notre Dame
  • Late Spring 2027: Brown University

Across the globe, states are under pressure to expand social protection, confront democratic backsliding, and adapt to rapid technological change—all while maintaining legitimacy and inclusion in service delivery. Their ability to deliver varies, and politicians in many states have challenged aspects of public administration whose legitimacy mainstream political parties once took as a matter of course. For these reasons, accounts of everything from contemporary welfare regimes to political economies are incomplete without consideration of public bureaucracies. Yet scholarship on public administration remains fragmented along disciplinary, regional, and methodological lines—with particular bifurcation between scholarship on the United States, which tends to employ quantitative and formal models, and scholarship on public administration in other nations, which often employs historical and qualitative techniques to analyze how bureaucracies work in practice. Bringing together a comparative group of scholars is essential to advance a new generation of theory on how states actually work, generating insights across both geographic and methodological differences.

We aim to convene scholars across global contexts to produce an edited volume on the Comparative Sociology of Public Administration via a series of two mini-conferences. We welcome proposals on any aspect of everyday governance, with particular interest in proposed chapters on the following themes: making rights real, state (il)legibility projects, AI and technology in governance, administrative professionals and careers, democratic backsliding and bureaucratic resistance, administrative burdens and improving service delivery, coproduction of public services, and inequalities in public service provision.

Confirmed volume contributors include leading scholars of public administration (Elisabeth Clemens, Pamela Herd, Armando Lara-Millan, Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Michael Woolcock, and Nicholas Wilson), and we are soliciting additional chapter proposals via an open call. Participants will meet in person for two working groups, with travel costs borne by host institutions—Notre Dame’s Kellogg Center in Fall 2026 and Brown University’s Sociology Department in Spring 2027.

If you are interested in applying and would like to meet with us around ASA or over Zoom to chat, please contact us by email.

Organizers:

Email proposals to sociologypublicadmin@gmail.com

Please include in your proposal:

  • Title of Proposed Chapter
  • Name, affiliation, and contact information of author(s)
  • 500-word extended abstract

Deadline for Proposals: Monday, August 17, 2026

Anticipated Timeline:

  • September 1, 2026: Acceptances Announced
  • Early December 2026: Rough Drafts for Notre Dame Conference
  • Early June 2027: Revised Drafts for Brown Conference

Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Sloan — AI in Healthcare

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, Job Postings, postdocsLeave a comment

The MIT Sloan School of Management, in collaboration with the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) program in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, invites applications for a Postdoctoral Associate to join a participatory action research project on worker-centered AI implementation in healthcare. The project — a partnership between MIT researchers, a large healthcare system, and the union representing its frontline workers — develops and evaluates concrete strategies for engaging frontline workers in decisions about how AI technologies are adopted and implemented in their workplaces.

The appointment is for one year beginning September 1, 2026 (or an earlier mutually agreed date), with the possibility of renewal contingent on funding. The Postdoctoral Associate should expect to work from Cambridge, MA, with regular travel to the field site in Central Massachusetts. The position is eligible for MIT benefits.

The Postdoctoral Associate will be mentored by Professors Erin Kelly, Kate Kellogg, and Zana Buçinca, and will collaborate with the broader project team, the SERC postdoctoral fellow cohort, and the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER) community. Requirements include strong qualitative research skills and demonstrated experience working with multiple stakeholders. See full description at https://apply.interfolio.com/188620.

New Publication: “Participant Observation in the 21st Century: How the Digital Dimension Matters for All Ethnographers.” 

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, PublicationsLeave a comment

Crooke, Catherine L. 2026. “Participant Observation in the 21st Century: How the Digital Dimension Matters for All Ethnographers.” Qualitative Research 26(2): 457–477. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941261420113

Abstract: Scholarship on participant observation in the digital era has produced a proliferation of labels—virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, and netnography, among others—that often position digitally attuned methods as specialized departures from ethnography’s core. This framing risks obscuring the relevance of digital practices for ethnographers whose research questions do not centrally concern technology. The present article proposes that attention to the multifaceted digital dimensions of social life enhances participant observation even for those who study social processes whose center of gravity is offline. Drawing on a multiyear ethnographic study initiated shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, I emphasize that much ostensibly ‘in-person’ work unfolds through screens and digital infrastructures. Consciously engaging these environments expands ethnographic insight in three key ways: increasing the surface area of observable interaction, foregrounding participants’ extended social networks, and illuminating collaborative interpretive work among research participants.

Catherine L. Crooke is a lawyer and PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. She uses qualitative methods to study law, migration, work, organizations, and professions. Her dissertation draws on over four years of participant observation and nearly 100 interviews with Los Angeles-based legal service providers to examine the U.S. immigration system as a site of both legal promise and institutional erosion. Foregrounding the everyday experiences of immigration lawyers, she shows how institutional instability reshapes professional practice and transforms the meaning of legality itself. More broadly, her project offers a framework for understanding how professionals sustain moral commitments within institutions marked by constraint.

Catherine’s scholarship appears in Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and Qualitative Research, and has received support from numerous funding agencies including the Ford Foundation, the American Sociological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program, the Center for Engaged Scholarship, and the Center for Institutional Courage. She holds a JD from Yale Law School, an MSc from the University of Oxford, and a BA from Columbia University.

New Publication: “The Inauthenticity of Organizational Diversity Initiatives: Perspectives from the Tech Industry”

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, PublicationsLeave a comment

Wilcox, Annika and Neeraj Rajasekar. 2026. “The Inauthenticity of Organizational Diversity Initiatives: Perspectives from the Tech Industry.” The Sociological Quarterly.  https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2026.2644528

Abstract: Organizations often use diversity initiatives to craft an image of moral goodness while doing little to address workplace inequalities. This disconnect is intensified in the U.S. technology industry, where companies attempt to claim identities as progressive diversity supporters despite obvious patterns of inequality and discrimination. How do tech employees make sense of this contradiction? This study combines the sociology of diversity, sociology of organizations, and organizational authenticity literatures to analyze, via 31 in-depth interviews, how employees of a large U.S. tech company evaluate diversity initiatives in the U.S. tech industry. Results show that tech workers question the authenticity of high-tech diversity programs: they frame technology companies as lacking commitment to diversity, overemphasizing conformity to diversity-related norms, and demonstrating dubious inconsistency in their approach to diversity. Nonetheless, they moderate their criticisms by noting that tech companies do “try” to take responsibility for diversity. Interviewees voiced these impressions similarly across race and gender. We therefore argue that the (in)authenticity of diversity initiatives can be a unifying concern amongst individuals with differing social identities. As diversity initiatives exist largely due to social pressures, they will need to overcome issues of inauthenticity in order to survive widespread sociopolitical critiques.

Annika Wilcox is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice at East Stroudsburg University. Her research examines how organizational inequalities are reproduced and challenged, primarily focusing on diversity/DEI discourse and initiatives. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Social Science Research, Sociological Forum, and Research in the Sociology of Work.  

Neeraj Rajasekar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Sociology/Anthropology department at University of Illinois, Springfield. He completed his PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in 2021. He has written scholarly articles and book chapters about diversity discourse, diversity attitudes, racial attitudes, racial inequality, and the history of multiculturalism in the United States. His publications have appeared in Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, Social Currents, Sociological Forum, and other journals.

New Publication: “Varieties of Capitalism and Cross-national Variation in Fertility Rates”

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, PublicationsLeave a comment

Movahed, Masoud, and Emilio A. Parrado. 2026. “Varieties of Capitalism and Cross-national Variation in Fertility Rates.” Demography 63 (2): 511–536. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-12563895.

Abstract: The institutional approach to explaining cross-national variation in demographic outcomes has gained increasing visibility in both academic research and public policy discourse. In this vein, much of the literature has focused on the effects of welfare programs on risk management and the associated costs of fertility. However, an alternative, more comprehensive perspective, namely, the “varieties of capitalism,” emphasizes the role of broader social-structural and institutional characteristics of national economies in generating socioeconomic outcomes. This perspective has not been extended to debates around cross-national differences in demographic outcomes. We fill this void by elaborating on a varieties of capitalism account of cross-national and longitudinal variation in fertility rates. Drawing on panel data spanning more than three decades (1985‒2019) across 21 countries in the Global North, we investigate how institutional factors, through the lens of the varieties of capitalism perspective, correlate with differences in total fertility rates between countries and over time. Our results demonstrate that crucial institutional dimensions, such as centralization of wage bargaining, the employment protection index, and active labor market policies, are associated with variation in total fertility rates across countries and over time.

Authors:

  • Masoud Movahed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
  • Emilio A. Parrado is Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology and Director of Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Call for Abstracts: Research Symposium on Young People’s Access to Social Rights

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, Calls for AbstractsLeave a comment

The EU–Council of Europe Youth Partnership invites submissions for its upcoming Research Symposium: Young People’s Access to Social Rights, which will take place in Strasbourg, France, from September 15–17, 2026.

The symposium seeks research contributions examining young people’s access to social rights, with particular interest in work adopting a European, cross-national, or comparative perspective.

Possible themes include:

  • Access to social protection and quality public services
  • Access to education and training
  • Access to health services
  • Access to housing
  • Access to employment
  • Access to participation
  • Access to social rights for minority social groups
  • Access to sport, leisure, and culture

The deadline for abstract submissions is May 31, 2026.

For additional information and submission details, please see the links below:

For questions about the symposium, please contact Maria-Carmen Pantea, Chair of the Scientific Committee, at maria.pantea@ubbcluj.ro.

New Publication: “The Foundational Role of Legal Status Categories in Stratifying Job Loss Outcomes”

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, PublicationsLeave a comment

Protasiuk, Ewa. 2026. “The Foundational Role of Legal Status Categories in Stratifying Job Loss Outcomes.” Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spag014

Abstract: Job loss is a common, stratifying experience in the contemporary labor market, but scholars have undertheorized its relationship to a major axis of inequality: legal status. To bridge this gap, this paper uses qualitative data from interviews and participant observation to compare outcomes after job loss among 76 restaurant workers in three different legal status categories (U.S.-born citizens, immigrants who are legally authorized to work, and immigrants without this authorization). Situated amidst a discussion of unemployment regulations and legal status categories as sites of governance and stratification, my findings point to two mechanisms of legal status-based stratification among unemployed workers. First, legal status directly determines eligibility for unemployment relief. Second, legal status divergently shapes interactions with the unemployment relief system due to differing risks of legal violence associated with distinct statuses. I show that, through these mechanisms, legal status stratifies workers’ agency over the timing and conditions of their return to work after job loss. I also discuss gendered patterns within legal status categories. These findings extend the framework of unemployment as a socially stratifying institution, integrate legal status into theories of gender in unemployment stratification, and contribute to literatures on immigrant job loss as well as immigration and stratification.

Author: Ewa Protasiuk is an incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Call for Papers: HJSR Special Issue 49 – Rural Action

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Calls for Abstracts, Calls for PapersLeave a comment

The Humboldt Journal of Social Relations (HJSR) invites submissions for its 2027 Special Issue 49, Rural Action in the United States: Community-Driven Strategies for Equity, Transformation and Participatory Research.

This special issue aims to advance scholarly and practice-based conversations about rural communities as dynamic sites of both structural inequity and transformative action. The editors welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions examining the diverse forms, sites, and expressions of rural action across the United States.

Submission Information

  • Abstract deadline (250 words): June 30, 2026
  • Notification of selected abstracts: July 15, 2026
  • Full research articles (maximum 8,500 words) due: September 15, 2026
  • Commentaries and creative writing submissions (maximum 3,000 words) due: November 15, 2026

Abstracts should be sent to: hjsr@humboldt.edu

HJSR 2027 Co-Editors

  • Dawn Arledge, MA — California Center for Rural Policy
  • Nino Dzotsenidze, PhD — California Center for Rural Policy
  • Nick Ortiz, MA — California Center for Rural Policy

For additional information, please view the full call for papers here.

OOW Virtual Panel on Platform Work

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, virtual sessionLeave a comment

May 6th, 2-3 pm EDT (11am-noon PDT/ 7-8pm BDT)

We invite you to join our virtual panel on digital platform work featuring:

Dr. Elif Birced, Dr. Hatim Rahman, and Dr. Kathleen Griesbach.

Work on digital platforms has exploded in the past decade and continues to evolve with technology. Today, these platforms cover an ever-increasing range of jobs. This panel brings together research on various types of platform work, including content creation, professional services, and ride-hailing and delivery.  

Register for the Zoom link here: https://tinyurl.com/oowplatformpanel

Presenter Bios:

Elif Birced is a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT Sloan School of Management and Schwarzman College of Computing. Broady, her research is at the intersection of sociology of work, cultural production and social media. Specifically, she studies how technology is reshaping work, worker commitment, and control over work with a particular focus on social media platforms. She will be an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Villanova University, starting in Fall 2026. 

Hatim A. Rahman is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations and Sociology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. His research investigates how artificial intelligence is impacting the nature of work and employment relationships in organizations and labor markets. His award-winning book, Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers (University of California Press), investigates how digital labor platform organizations use algorithms to control workers’ job opportunities. 

Kathleen Griesbach is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is broadly interested in work and inequality, the significance of time and space for social experience, and the dynamic interplay between culture and economic life. Much of her research examines how temporal and spatial instability shape workers’ experiences, and how workers in turn pursue dignity, meaning, and a path forward amid economic instability. She received her PhD in Sociology from Columbia University and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.