Social and Economic Inequality

Julia R. Steinberg has a background in social and quantitative psychology, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in reproductive health. Before coming to Maryland, she was faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research is at the intersection of psychology and reproductive health, and has focused on unintended pregnancy and mental health. Much of her research has sought to understand the relationship between abortion and subsequent mental health, in part for the policy implications.

Dr. Smith-Bynum received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia in 1999. Before joining the University of Maryland in 2010, she taught at Purdue University in the Departments of African American Studies, Psychological Sciences, and Child Development and Family Studies. Her current research interests include parenting in ecological context, African American mental health, adolescent mental health, African American family process, and racial identity.

Dr. Shenassa's work concerns the interaction between individual and social determinants of health. This work, which is primarily focused on maternal and child health, can be further categorized into two general areas: 1) developmental sequelae of in utero exposures to toxins; and 2) social epidemiology of injury.

I am a Survey Methodologist and Applied Statistician with interests in interviewer effects, interviewer-respondent interaction, survey falsification, paradata, and modeling of complex survey data; as such, these interests relate to many areas of population research and demography. I am currently working with Prof. Sonalde Desai and Prof. Feinian Chen to design and implement the 3rd wave of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS3). IHDS3 will also be interviewing migrant panelists.

Sayer is the Director of the Maryland Time Use Laboratory, at the University of Maryland. Sayer’s research on cross-national and historical determinants, patterns, and consequences of gendered time use documents how time in daily activities is a fundamental mechanism that reinforces and reconfigures gender, race and class inequality over time, place, and generation. Sayer's current projects examine how gender, race and ethnicity, immigrant status, and social class intersect with life stage variation in daily activity patterns, health, and well-being.

Dr. Sapkota's primary research interests lie in the area of exposure assessment and environmental epidemiology. He is interested in utilizing personal as well as population level exposure assessment methods to understand risk of risk of respiratory diseases. Current ongoing projects include 1) indoor air pollution from solid fuels and lung cancer risk in Nepal, 2) traffic exposure and risk of asthma exacerbation, and 3) climate change and respiratory diseases among representative sample of US population.

Roy’s research focuses on the life course of men on the margins of families and the work force. Through a mix of participant observation and life history interviews, he has explored the intersection of policy systems, such as welfare reform and incarceration, with parents' caregiving and providing roles. He has examined contextual barriers to involved fatherhood, including neighborhood factors that constrain physical mobility of poor young men in a 2004 paper in Social Problems.

Rashawn Ray's work addresses three key areas: the determinants and consequences of self-evaluated social class, men’s treatment of women, and how racial stratification structures social life. He is currently examining how racially mixed and segregated communities influence physical activity levels across racial/ethnic groups and contribute to healthy lifestyles and obesity rates.

Lauren Porter earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from University at Albany-SUNY in 2012, where she specialized in criminology and social demography. Dr. Porter is largely interested in topics that revolve around punishment. In particular, she investigates questions related to incarceration, including the collateral consequences of imprisonment and how population dynamics shape incarceration trends. Her current work also explores how offenders interact with neighborhood environments to choose crime locations and targets.

My recent research focuses on how measuring and rating teacher quality affects both students and teachers through their entire educational process and how public policies influence underprivileged groups such as immigrants and low-income populations. Particularly, my research looks at how to improve inequality through longitudinal studies of students through the education system. It also looks at how immigrants and overall inequality are affected by immigration policies and the teaching of English as second language in the United States education system.