Down The Research Rabbit Hole

Philip Gorsky is a comparative-historical sociologist from Yale University. His areas of research interest and focus include state formation, nationalism, revolutionism, economic development and secularization, with a special emphasis on religion and politics. You can find out more about Philip’s work on Yale’s Sociology department website.

In this episode, we discuss his publication, American Babylon: Christianity Before and After Trump.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates.

Jessi Streib is an assistant professor of sociology at Duke University. Her research looks at the experiences, reproduction, and alleviation of social class, all of which are a common thread throughout her publications. You can find out more about Jessi’s work on her website.

In this episode, we discuss her publication, Privilege Lost: Who Leaves the Upper Middle Class and How They Fall.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates.

Taylor Price is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s department of sociology. His key areas of expertise include cultural sociology, sociological theory, quantitative research methods. You can find out more about Taylor's work on his website.

In this episode, we discuss his PhD dissertation which looks at changes in the music production process with time, the role of technology, and what easier and widespread access to music has done for musicians and listeners. 

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates.

Fabien Accominotti is an assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research broadly lies at the intersections of cultural and economic sociology and stratification. You can find out more about Fabien on his UW-Madison Department of Sociology profile or on his personal website.

In this episode, we discuss his co-authored publication The Architecture of Status Hierarchies: Variations in Structure and Why They Matter for Inequality.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates.

Christian Smith is a postdoctoral scholar in sociology at the University of California Merced and holds a PhD in the same from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His areas of research interest include inequality, mobility, and the sociology of education. You can find out more about Christian on his website or on his UWisconsin-Madison profile.

In this episode, we discuss his paper, In the Footsteps of Siblings: College Attendance Disparities and the Intragenerational Transmission of Educational Advantage.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates.

Poonam Gandhi is a sociologist and professor at FLAME University’s Department of Sociology. Her areas of research interest include art and culture, gender and human relations. You can find out more about Poonam on FLAME University's faculty page.

In this episode, we discuss her co-authored publication Museums and Heritage Sites — The Missing Link in Smart City Planning: A Case Study of Pune City, India.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates.

Min Zhou is a distinguished professor of Sociology and Asian-American studies at UCLA. She also holds positions of the Walter & Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in US-China Relations & Communications and Director of the Asia-Pacific Centre at the university. Her areas of research interest include Asia and Asia-America, migration and development (particularly Chinese diasporas) and urban sociology. You can head over to Min’s website or her UCLA faculty profile page to know more.

In this episode, we discuss her publication Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates.

James Braun is an economic sociologist and lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Department of Sociology. His areas of research interest include financialization, the sociology of markets and diaspora-making. You can find his publications on his academia.edu page or catch him on the Twitter handle @jbrauneconsoc.

In this episode, we discuss his PhD thesis Local Culture and the Problem of Coordination: The Case of Jamaica’s Diasporic Real Estate Market.

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Gil Eyal is an author and professor of sociology affiliated with Columbia University. His broad research interests encompass sociological work around science, medicine, professions, knowledge and intellectuals, which he broadly calls ‘the sociology of expertise’. He has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Social Sciences (US & Canada). You can find out more about Gil on his Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience Directory Page or his faculty profile on Columbia’s Sociology Department website.

In this episode, we discuss his book The Crisis of Expertise.

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Jose Eos Trinidad is a doctoral student (2020) at the University of Chicago's Department of Sociology and is currently pursuing a joint PhD in Sociology and Comparative Human Development. His areas of research interest include organizational sociology, educational policy, and quantitative methods, and his research has been published in 20+ journals including Social Science and Medicine, the International Journal of Educational Development, and Studies in Educational Evaluation, among others. You can find out more about Eos and his research on UChicago's Sociology Department directory. 

In this episode, we discuss his publication, Social Consequences and Contexts of Adverse Childhood Experiences.

Check out the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Adam Valen Levinson is the author of the nonfiction novel The Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah (W. W. Norton, 2017) — dubbed "Eat, Pray, Laugh" by The New York Times but/and not without its controversy.  Morgan Parker, the National Book Critics Circle award winner for poetry, called him "an incredibly generous, compassionate, and thorough writer who gorgeously blends lyricism with reportage and philosophy with a confession."  Adam has written, filmed, and photographed for Al Jazeera, The Paris Review, Haaretz, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and VICE, and done college stints at the Meccas of real fake news, namely, The Colbert Report and The Onion. He holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College and is in the latter stages of his PhD at Yale University, where he travels globally to investigate new standup comedy scenes as a fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology. You can find out more about Adam and his work on his website. 

In this episode, we dig a bit deeper into humour and standup comedy as his areas of research. 

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Josh Seim is an assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. He is broadly interested in the governance of poverty and suffering, which has thus led him into the sociologies of medicine, punishment, and labour. His work has appeared in American Sociological Review, Sociological Methods and Research, Punishment and Society, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, and Teaching Sociology, among other outlets. You can find out more about Josh's work on USC's faculty page. 

In this episode, we discuss his book, Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering, published by the University of California Press. 

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Karlyn Gorski is a pre-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) at the University of Chicago's sociology department. Her research focuses on high school students in and around Chicago, and she is especially interested in youths' strategies for navigating the structures of schooling. You can find out more about Karlyn's work on her Linkedin profile. 

In this episode, we discuss her publication titled My Voice Matters: High School Debaters’ Acquisition of Dominant and Adaptive Cultural Capital, and briefly touch upon her recent research on the curbing of snack-selling at schools. 

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Dr. Rituparna Patgiri teaches Sociology at the Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, and holds a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology, an independent, women-led academic blog dedicated to promoting sociological content. Her areas of research interest include food, gender, culture, media, and the public. You can take a look at Rituparna's publications on her Google Scholar page, and follow her on the Twitter handle @Rituparna37.

On this episode, we discuss her dissertation on the art of mobile theatre in the Indian state of Assam.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Dr. Divya Balan is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Flame University, Pune, India. She holds Doctorate, Masters and M.Phil degrees in International Studies, and is a political science graduate. Her areas of teaching and research interest include the disciplinary histories of International Studies and European Studies, international migration and migration policies, Indian diasporic communities, Gulf migration, and Kerala studies. You can find about more about Divya on Flame University's faculty page. 

On this episode, we discuss her doctoral thesis, Immigrants Integration Policies in Britain: A Study of Indian Immigrants Incorporation 2000-2010, in tandem with her general research on Indian immigrants in the UK. 

Catch us on Twitter at the handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Kyle Shupe is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Cincinnati, and is also the managing editor of Social Problems, the official publication for the Society for the Study of Social Problems. He holds an MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Cincinnati and a BA in Sociology from Bowling Green State University, with minors in Sexuality Studies and Political Science. His areas of research interest include queer men's sexual identities, communities, and practices as well as the social organisation of desire. You can find out more about Kyle on the University of Cincinnati's website. 

On this episode, we discuss his recent work on queer men's cruising strategies and the surveillance and regulation of public sex.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Jeffrey Guhin is an assistant professor of Sociology at UCLA. He holds an MA and MPhil degrees in Sociology from Yale University, and his research interests include education, culture, religion, and theory. You can find out more about Jeffrey's work on his website.

On this episode, we discuss his first book, Agents of God: Boundaries of Authority in Muslim and Christian Schools, published by Oxford University Press in 2021.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Alex Barnard is an assistant professor of Sociology at New York University. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Sociology from Princeton University. His areas of research interest include Medical Sociology and Mental Health, Political Sociology, Comparative Cultural Sociology, Social Policy, Social Theory. You can find out more about Alex's work on his website. 

On this episode, we discuss his book project, Mental States (under contract with Colombia University Press), which looks into how medical and governmental institutions make decisions concerning people living with severe mental illness in France and the USA. 

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates.

Marion Lieutaud is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). Her areas of interest include gender, migration, quantitative methods, welfare states and border states. You can read about Marion's published work and research in more detail on LSE's Sociology page.  

On this episode, we discuss her dissertation, Gender through Migration, Migration through Gender.

Catch us on the Twitter handle @DTRRHpodcast for further updates. 

Esha Chatterjee is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University's Department of Sociology specialising in the study of social inequality in the US. She holds an MA and BA degrees in Sociology from Stanford University, USA, and Presidency College, Kolkata, India, respectively. Her research interests include economic sociology, immigration, race and ethnicity, and social inequality and stratification. You can find out more about Esha on Stanford's Sociology Department Page. 

On this episode, we discuss Esha's dissertation topic on how college majors influence gender segregation and income inequality in occupations. 

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Dr. Bindu Menon is a faculty member at Azim Premji University's School of Arts and Sciences, where she teaches Media and Communication. She holds a PhD in Cinema and Cultural Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her teaching interests include Media Theory, Film and Cultural Studies, Cultures of Journalism, Gender and Sexuality and Digital Humanities. She has won numerous fellowships and research grants, some of which are the Fulbright research scholarship at Pennsylvania State University (2003), Charles Wallace Archival Grant (2007) Sarai Fellowship (2005), Spear Grant for Archival research (2010) and the UGC Junior Research Fellowship. You can find out more about Bindu on Azim Premji University's faculty page. 

On this episode, we discuss her work on the gender and labour dynamics in India's cinematic arena. 

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Michael L. Rosino is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Molloy College. His research and teaching focus on racial politics, media, social movements, crime, law and deviance, and human rights. His work emphasizes social change, policy, and community and civic engagement. He has published widely on the connections between racial oppression, struggles for racial equality, political conflicts, debates over public policy, and everyday social life in various scholarly and public outlets. His current research examines how activists within progressive grassroots political organizations engage with racial and political inequality through their identities, habits, and political strategies. The project illuminates the possibilities and barriers for building a racially just and inclusive grassroots democracy and advances new understandings of racial politics grounded in everyday social life. You can find out more about Michael's work on his website. 

In this episode, we discuss his first book, Debating the Drug War: Race, Politics, and the Media with Routledge Press.

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Dr. Alan Martino (he/him) is a faculty member in the Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies program in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. His main research interests are in critical disability studies, gender and sexualities; feminist and critical disability studies theories; qualitative and community-based research (particularly participatory and inclusive research methodologies). His doctoral research examined the romantic and sexual lives of adults with intellectual disabilities in Ontario, Canada, by putting into conversation theories from both the sociology of sexualities and the field of critical disability studies. You can find out more about Alan's work on his website. 

His current research project explores the intimate lives of 2SLGBTQ+ disabled people in Alberta, which we discuss on this episode. 

Catch us on Twitter or Instagram at @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Sean Bock is a Ph.D. student at Harvard University's Department of Sociology and graduate affiliate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He holds a BA Degree in Sociology and Political Science from Indiana University - Bloomington. His research uses quantitative and computational methods to study topics broadly related to political culture and social change, and recent work focuses on public political polarisation, within-party variation in socio-political attitudes, political behavior, and nationalism in the United States and Western Europe. You can find out more about Sean's work on his website. 

In our latest episode, we discuss his publication Conflicted Religionists: Measuring Political Backlash on Salient Issues. 

Catch us on the handle @DTRRHPodcast on Twitter and Instagram for updates.

You can find out more about her Charis's research work on the UC Irvine faculty page. Be sure to check out her TED Talk, The Threatening Nature of Rap Music, which we specifically discuss on this episode. 

Follow us on Twitter or Instagram at the handle @ResearchDown for updates. 

Daphne M. Penn is a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Population Studies Centre at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a B.S. in Human and Organizational Development from Vanderbilt Peabody College, an M.S. in Sociology from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in Education (with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society) from Harvard University. She was also a Harvard Presidential Scholar. Her research focuses on the roots of racialised inequality in the United States, and the politics of ethno-racial stratification within the context of demographic change, specifically looking at the roles of schools, stakeholders, and decision-makers in the same. You can read more about Daphne's research on her website.

On this episode, we discuss her solo-authored book project, The American Dream Deferred, particularly looking at the barriers to educational equity and the role of education as an "equalizer" or tool for social mobility. 

Catch us on Twitter or Instagram at the handle @ResearchDown for further updates. 

Dr. Rebecca Gibson is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame. Her published works include “Desire in the Age of Robots and AI: An Investigation in Science Fiction and Fact” (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) and “The Corseted Skeleton: A Bioarchaeology of Binding” (Palgrave Macmillan 2020). Her research areas of interest include corsets, skeletal anthropology, biological anthropology, science fiction and artificial intelligence. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from American University, and when not writing or teaching can be found reading mystery novels amidst a pile of stuffed animals. You can take a look at Rebecca's research on her Google Scholar Page. 

On this episode, we discuss her work around robots, Artificial Intelligence (AI), desire, and fluid sexualities. 

Catch us on the handle @ResearchDown on Twitter or Instagram for updates. 

On this episode, we discuss Ridhima’s MPhil dissertation- an ethnographic inquiry of a VHP-run cow shelter in Faridabad, Haryana, which also marked her point of entry into her doctoral work. You can access the complete publication here. 

Catch on Twitter or Instagram at the handle @ResearchDown for updates. 

You can read more about Fischer on his UC Berkeley profile or Wikipedia page. Further, be sure to check out his blog, Made in America. On this episode, we discuss the array of the themes his research covers. 

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Dr. Jonathan Coley works at the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University, USA. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Samford University, and M.A. and Ph.D degrees in Sociology from Vanderbilt university. His research focuses on social movements, politics, religion, education, sexuality and race. He also provided extensive editorial service to the discipline, including through past work as editorial associate of American Sociological Review and book review editor of Work and Occupations. He currently serves as the deputy editor of The Sociological Quarterly. You can find out more about Jonathan's research on his website. 

In this episode, we discuss his book, Gay on God’s Campus: Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities, which looks at the experiences of LGBT students at Christian colleges and universities in the USA. This was published by The University of North Carolina Press and received the 2018 Distinguished Book Award from the Mid-South Sociological Association. You can buy the book at a discount of 40% on the UNC Press website using the discount code 01DAH40. 

Catch us on Instagram and Twitter at the handle @ResearchDown for updates. 

To know more about Nicolas's research, you can take a look at his page on the LSE Sociology Department website. 

Follow us on Twitter or Instagram on the handle @ResearchDown for updates. 

Dr. Michael O. Johnston is an assistant professor of sociology from William Penn University, Iowa, USA. He holds B.A. degrees in sociology and psychology from Buena Vista University, an M.P.A. from Iowa State University, and a PhD in public administration from Walden University. His areas of specialisation include criminology, social problems, qualitative methods, juvenile delinquency, and marriage. In this episode, we discuss his publication: The Tulip Queen and Her Royal Court: A Content Analysis of Doing Gender at a Tulip Queen Pageant. 

He is also the host of the New Books in Sociology Podcast, and has his publications up on Google Scholar. 

Catch us on Twitter and Instagram at the handle @ResearchDown for updates. 

Jose Martin Aveldanes is a current third-year Ph.D. student in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Last year (2020), he was was a National Institutes of Health Fellow in the Department of Demography under the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Branch for Child and Human Development Support. His research interests span the family, quantitative and computational methods, sexuality, social demography, stratification and inequality, and culture. You can take a look at Jose's profile and research on the UC Berkeley Sociology page. 

In this episode, we discuss his research on the well-being of same-sex parents in the USA. 

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Dr. Shai Dromi is a lecturer at Harvard University's department of Sociology. He is a cultural and comparative-historical sociologist with research on international humanitarian organisations and movements, transnational advocacy, and political culture. His research looks at the role of religion and cultural beliefs in creating civil society organisations and movements, and in shaping the production of social knowledge. Shai is currently co-authoring the book Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science, under an advance contract with the University of Chicago Press, which we discuss in this episode. You can find out more about Shai and his research on his website. 

Catch us on Twitter or Instagram at the handle @ResearchDown for updates. 

Surbhi Shrivastava is a second-year PhD student in Sociology at Emory University, USA. Her research focuses on gender and health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and maternal health. Surbhi holds a Bachelor’s in Dental Surgery from Manipal University, India and an MPH in Health Policy, Economics and Finance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India. Previously, she has worked in public health research at non-profit organisations in Mumbai and Delhi. In this episode, we discuss her fieldwork and research in the area of obstetric violence in India. You can take a look at Surbhi's research on her Google Scholar page. 

Catch us on the Twitter or Instagram at the handle @ResearchDown for updates. 

Dr. Harriet Earle is a comics and pop culture scholar with a research focus on representations of violence and trauma in visual culture, particularly comics. She works as a senior lecturer of english and creative writing at the Sheffield Hallam University, UK, and is also a research fellow at the Centre for War, Atrocity, and Genocide at Nipissing University in Canada. She is the author of Comics: An Introduction (2020), and Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War (2017). In this episode, we discuss the latter publication. You can find out more about Harriet's work in detail on her faculty page at the Sheffield Hallam University website. 

Catch us on Twitter or Instagram at the handle @ResearchDown for updates.

Inga Popovaite is a PhD candidate at the department of sociology and criminology at the University of Iowa. She studies emotions, gender and status in space analog environments, which we discuss in this episode. She speaks Lithuanian, Russian, and a bit of Georgian and German. You can find out more about Inga's research on her website. 

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Dr. Chaitanya Ravi is an assistant professor of Public Policy at Flame University, Pune, in India. He has taught energy policy, environmental policy, biology and microbiology at George Mason University, and environmental studies at New York University. His research interests at the intersection of energy policy, environmental policy, international relations and South Asia. You can take a look at his research on his Google Scholar page. 

In this episode, we discuss his publication, The 1971 Bangladesh War and Policy Lessons for Climate Refugee Management in South Asia. 

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Dr. Anup Tripathi is an assistant professor at Flame University in Pune, and holds Bachelor's degree in political science from University of Delhi and holds Master's and PhD degrees from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai. He has been a visiting scholar at Masaryk University in Czech Republic and Roskilde University in Denmark, and is also a recipient of the NET-Junior research fellowship by the UGC and NTSE scholarship by the NCERT, and has worked extensively as a researcher and teaching associate. You can find his research up on his Google scholar page. 

In this episode, we discuss his PhD dissertation, Cognising Homelessness:  A Gaze into the Lived Experiences of Homeless People in Mumbai. 

Catch us on Twitter at the handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates. 

Dr. Tannistha Samanta is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Sociology at FLAME University, Pune, India. Her research broadly lies at the interdisciplinary crossroads of family sociology and gerontology where she focuses on living arrangements, social capital and health, older adult sexualities and theory development in ageing studies. You can find her on Twitter at @tannistha14, and check out her research on her Google Scholar page. 

In this episode, we discuss her publication: Living Solo at Midlife: Can the Pandemic de stigmatise living alone in India?, which explores how single middle-aged Indian women navigate their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Catch us on Twitter at the handle @DTRRHpodcast for updates.