PhDs on the Job Market

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow in Sociology at University of California, Berkeley. I received my PhD in Sociology from New York University in 2021. My research has been published in American Sociological Review, Social Science & Medicine, and Sociological Forum. My work has been cited in media outlets such as New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Wired. My writing has been featured on sociology sites such as Contexts and The Society Pages. My articles have received the American Sociological Association (ASA) Body and Embodiment Section Best Graduate Student Paper award and an honorable mention for Best Article from ASA Sociology of Population section. My research has been funded by the National Science Foundation. I am currently working on my book project, Gaming Health: How Doctors and Patients Weigh Risk and Chance at Fertility Clinics. In this book, based on my dissertation research which included observations of hundreds of doctor-patient consults at three fertility clinics as well as interviews with over a hundred patients and doctors, I argue that presenting medical choices as a game of chance allows medical providers to thread the needle of maintaining their medical authority with patients who are also paying customers and makes it possible for patients to take part in medical decision making within the bounds set up by their providers. More information can be found on my website: elizacbrown.com 

My research deals with political and economic sociology, public policy, public opinion, and political behavior. My dissertation—"Scarcity Politics: Budget Deficits, Public Debt, and Distributive Conflict"—explores the political economic and institutional dynamics that shape American public finance and fiscal policy, as well as what these politics mean for inequality, public attitudes and policy preferences, and inter-group conflict. I am also the co-principal investigator with Professor Gianpaolo Baiocchi of the Politial Participation Project at NYU’s Urban Democracy Lab, a collaborative, multi-site interview and ethnographic study of civic enagagement, political participation, and community organizing in New York City. My publications and working papers can be accessed at nedcrowley.com.

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My research agenda contributes to sociological understandings of race/ethnicity, work and organizations, and health. It is motivated by novel and enduring questions in sociology: How do people create collective meaning in institutional settings? How do these meanings inform action? What role does meaning-making play in facilitating or inhibiting racial inequality? Motivated by these questions, I have studied a range of sites and populations, from an ethnoracially diverse community health organization to a bottle and can redemption center frequented by unhoused workers. I use a range of methods to explore these concerns, from immersive organizational ethnography and in-depth interviewing to quantitative analyses of secondary data. By investigating taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of race, work, and identity, my work aims to strengthen theoretical and institutional approaches to combating inequality. My research is published in Genealogy, Demography, and the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. I have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. I’ve also taught or led discussion sections throughout my time in graduate school. In 2022, I received the Outstanding Teaching Award from NYU’s college of Arts and Sciences.

José G. Soto-Márquez is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and an Urban Democracy Lab Doctoral Fellow at New York University. He researches and teaches on the topics of migration, race/ethnicity, gender, theory, cities, work, inequality, health, and the family.  His dissertation focuses on one of Europe’s so-called “lost generations” and draws on two years of ethnographic observations of and 135 in-depth interviews with young and high-skilled Spanish immigrants, who left Spain after the 2008 global financial crisis. His doctoral work explores Spanish immigrants’ divergent and gendered social mobility, assimilation/integration, and ethnoracial identification across New York City, Buenos Aires, and London. 

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