Research Activities
A Comparative Study of Responses to Discrimination by Members of Stigmatized Groups > Research Team
- Christopher A. Bail
- Jovonne Bickerstaff
- Jeff Denis
- Crystal Fleming
- Hanna Herzog
- Michèle Lamont
- Ron Levi
- Nissim Mizrachi
- Elisa Reis
- Graziella Silva
- Leanne Son Hing
- Jessica Welburn
Christopher A. Bail is a Doctoral Fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program on Inequality and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government and a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. His research on symbolic boundaries against immigrants in Europe and comparative anti-racism has appeared in the American Sociological Review and the Revue Europeene des Migrations Internationales. He was previously a Visiting Scholar at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (Paris) and the Universiteit van Amsterdaam. During this time, he was a German Marshall Fund Fellow and a member of the European Network on Inequality. Before beginning graduate study, he worked as an Intern in the United Nations Development Programme in Geneva, Switzerland.
An alumna of MIT (BS in writing and in urban studies, 2002) and the University of Cambridge (MPhil in social psychology, 2005), Jovonne Bickerstaff is a Ford fellow and NSF graduate research fellow. My work has centered on the racialization of French identity and how racialized representations of Frenchness impact perceptions of life chances, equality, and opportunity among French blacks of Sub-Saharan African origin (i.e. second-generation immigrants). My master’s qualifying paper, drawing on 3-years of fieldwork, examines how ordinary, non-activist, adult black French rebut racism and discrimination in their daily lives. It focuses, particularly, on how the assertion of a French identity among this population becomes an everyday anti-racist strategy that allows them to rebut racially motivated exclusion in the French context where the notion of universalism as a national interest and the lived reality of ethnic distinction and racial discrimination pose dire contradictions. My broader interests include African American gender relations and family structures, transnational articulations and performances of “blackness,” and how racial/ethnic minorities assert and negotiate national identity.
Jeff Denis is a G-4 in Sociology at Harvard and a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Born and raised in Toronto, he received his Honors B.A. from the University of Toronto in 2004. His research interests include organizational change, race and ethnic relations, health inequalities, and healthy social policy. He is co-author of Survival Strategies: The Life, Death, and Renaissance of a Canadian Teaching Hospital (Canadian Scholars' Press, 2006).
Crystal Fleming is a Ford Foundation fellow and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology. A native of Chattanooga, TN, Fleming graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with degrees in French and Sociology and attended the Universite de Provence in France. A specialist of cultural sociology, her research focuses on ethnoracial identity and antiracism. Her masters thesis examined the sociopolitical discourse of African American poets in predominately black and predominately white spoken word venues. With Michéle Lamont, Fleming is the co-author of “Everyday Anti-Racism: Competence and Religion in the Cultural Repertoire of the African-American Elite and Working Class” which appeared in the Du Bois Review in 2005. Her latest published article examines how ‘Black Brahmins’ in Boston during the 1920's worked to organize the arts, and in so doing, sought to redefine the scope of legitimate culture. Fleming's dissertation will comparatively assess the construction of collective memories and symbolic boundaries in commemorations of slavery in France and the United States.
Hanna Herzog, Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, and Senior Research Fellow at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute. She holds a PhD degree from Tel Aviv University. Her ongoing research agenda revolves around diverse domains where politics and culture intersect and shape each other, focusing on the ways ethnicity, race, nationality and gender as social categories are constructed within Israeli socio-political culture. Among her books: Gendering Politics (1999), and recent papers: "Trisection of Forces: Gender, Religion and the State—The Case of State-Run Religious Schools in Israel." BJS, (2006) "Racism and the Politics of Signification: Israeli Public Discourse on Racism toward Palestinian Citizens." Ethnic and Racial Studies (2008).
Michèle Lamont is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and a professor of sociology and African and African American studies at Harvard University. She has written widely in the fields of inequality, culture, race, and theory. Her publications include Money, Morals and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper Middle Class (University of Chicago Press 1992), The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration (Harvard University Press, 2000), How Professors Think: Inside the World of Academic Judgment (Harvard University Press 2009), and Successful Societies: How Culture and Inequality Affect Health (co-edited with Peter Hall, Cambridge University Press, August 2009). With the support of grants from the National Science Foundation and the Weatherhead Initiative for International Affairs, she is leading an international research project that compares everyday antiracist strategies in Brazil, Israel, and the United States. As program director at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, she is also engaged in a five-year interdisciplinary project on social inclusion and other conditions that lead to “successful societies.”
Ron Levi is an Assistant Professor of Criminology at the University of Toronto. A main focus of his research is on law and internationalization, with an emphasis on international criminal law, human rights, and the global export of rule of law programs. A second aspect of his research investigates current urban and criminal justice policies, and whether these reflect broader political ideas such as neoliberalism. In that context he has studied a range of issues relating to law, crime, and community including gang loitering ordinances, gated communities, and the community notification of sex offenders. Ron's third area of research focuses on transnational experiences of legality, citizenship, and the state, particularly among youth. This includes studies of transnational citizenship and the role of law in the life course of first- and second-generation Toronto youth, as well as the role of the state and private institutions in producing diasporic community identities. Beginning in July 2008, Ron will be the Domain Leader for the "Justice, Policing and Security" research area of the Ontario Metropolis Centre, a consortium that emphasizes interdisciplinary research on immigration and settlement in the Canadian context.
Nissim Mizrachi is a faculty member at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University and a Research Fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. As a Fulbright Scholar, he obtained his PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After obtaining his degree, he joined the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard University, as a Research Fellow. His main areas of interest are the sociology of knowledge and culture, science and medicine, practice theory and social inequality His publications have appeared in various international journals, including: American Sociological Review, American Ethnologist, Social Science and Medicine and Sociology of Health and Illness. He is the 2008 recipient of the Geertz Prize for that year's best article in the sociology of culture, awarded by the American Sociological Association.
Elisa Reis is Professor of Political Sociology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and chair of the Interdisciplinary Research Network on Inequality (NIED). She holds a PhD in Political Science from MIT. Her major research interests are social inequality, state-building and state transformation, patterns of interaction between state, market and society, and NGOs as social policy actors. Among her publications in English are Elite Perceptions of Poverty and Inequality, London: Zed Books, 2005 (co-edited with Mick Moore), “Inequality in Brazil: facts and perceptions”, in G. Therborn (ed.) Inequalities of the World, London: Verso, 2007. “Transnational and Domestic Relations of NGOs in Brazil”, (with M.Koslinski) in World Development, 37, 2, 2009, pp 714-725. “The long lasting marriage between state and nation despite globalization,” International Political Science Review, July 2004.
Graziella Silva is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Harvard University and a fellow at the Inequality and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government. She wrote her Masters 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 the Weatherhead project, Graziella is conducting interviews with black middle class professionals and coordinating fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro.
Leanne Son Hing is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Guelph. She specializes in the study of social justice issues (e.g., prejudice, inequality, injustice). Her research has been published in the premier journals of her field. She was educated at Queen’s University (BAH, 1994) and the University of Waterloo (MA, 1997; PhD, 2000). Dr. Son Hing is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She has also been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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 the black family, the experiences of the black middle class in the U.S. and qualitative methods. She completed her qualifying paper on the ways in which professional black women in London and the U.S. think about dating and marriage. With support from the National Science Foundation, Jessica is currently working on her dissertation which explores downward mobility among black Americans who grew up in middle class homes.