Family and Social Change

Dr. M. Bishop is an Assistant Professor in the department of Family Science in the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland, College Park. Bishop’s scholarship employs developmental, intersectional, and community-engaged approaches to document the lives and health of LGBTQ+ people across the life course, with a particular emphasis on youth. Bishop’s current research explores how youth development, social and familial relationships, school contexts, and structural stigma shape LGBTQ+ people’s health and thriving. Bishop received a B.A.

Monica Das Gupta studies the role of family systems in shaping maternal and child health outcomes in Asia; (2) public health systems for communicable disease control, (3) population, poverty, and climate change.

Dr. Khanna's research examines gender inequality in the contemporary US context, with particular attention to changes in self-identification and their implications for changing population trends. This includes studies examining sexual fluidity over the life course, as well as methods of survey adjustment for gender identification, both of which impact measurement of gender and sexual populations.

My research interests included reproductive and perinatal racial and ethnic disparities. The population focuses on Black women residing in the South. In the past I have research maternity care deserts, teen pregnancy, and breastfeeding trends. Currently, I hope to research maternal flourishing and create a measurement tool for clinicians and programs to use to determine if mothers are flourishing during early postpartum.

Laura R. Schneider is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of Maryland specializing in social psychology. Her research explores how individuals and groups respond when identities are challenged or disrupted, and how these experiences shape emotion, behavior and collective meaning making. 

Michael Lebron is a fifth year doctoral candidate and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Prior to his time at UMD, Michael worked at the National Policing Institute (formerly the National Police Foundation) as a Research Associate where his work was focused on program and policy evaluation. He’s contributed to several NIJ-funded and privately funded projects related to hotspots policing, police agency responses to mental health crises and substance use issues, and sexual assault nurse examiner programs.

I am a Ph.D. student in Economics at the University of Maryland. My research lies at the intersection of population economics, education, and gender, with a focus on how policy and environmental conditions shape human capital and family outcomes. Current projects study access to contraception and fertility, the intergenerational effects of women’s political enfranchisement, and how extreme heat affects student achievement and mitigation behavior.

I am a PhD student of sociology and demography focused on documenting inequalities in the areas of education, family, and development, and geographically in South and Southeast Asia. My work aims to highlight hidden symmetries through which social structures, particularly class and caste, maintain, perpetuate, and legitimize inequalities in the contemporary world. I do so by studying processes within different types of institutions. Previously, I have documented such processes within the classroom and in studying inter- and intra-generational relationships within families.

Guyu Sun is a PhD candidate in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, where she also earned her MA in 2025. She received her BSocSc in Sociology (Honors) from the University of Macau in 2022. Her research examines inequalities in punishment and their collateral consequences, with a particular focus on the experiences of children and adolescents and the roles of peers, parents, teachers, and school contexts. She is also interested in labeling theories and the role of stigma and labeling in different contexts.