The Sociology Department is excited to run the Undergraduate Research Grant competition again in Academic Year 2025.
This award gives undergraduate students an opportunity to earn independent study credit while pursuing their own research or working on a faculty member's ongoing project. Following the success of last year's Spring Research Symposium, students will present their research at the end of the spring semester. We encourage you to apply for the chance to win one of five $300 awards.
Applicants must have a faculty mentor who has agreed to serve on the project. Read on to learn about the exciting research being done by faculty who are available to serve as mentors in Spring 2025.
Beatriz Aldana Marquez
Research Interests: Immigration Detention, Latino Sociology, Critical Race Theory
contact: beatriz.aldana_marquez@uconn.edu
Ruth Braunstein
Research Interests: Religion, US politics, culture, money/taxes, Christian nationalism
contact: ruth.braunstein@uconn.edu
Simon Cheng
Research Interests: Quantitative Analyses on education and family
(*Only for students who have basic knowledge in quantitative analysis and are willing to work on large-scale secondary datasets)
contact: simon.cheng@uconn.edu
David Embrick
Research Interests: Diversity, Race/Place/Space, Racism, Urban/Community, Whitelash
contact: david.embrick@uconn.edu
Phoebe Godfrey
Research Interests: Social justice, climate change, sustainability, education, food
contact: phoebe.godfrey@uconn.edu
Elizabeth Holzer
Research Interests: human rights, political sociology, science and technology studies, African studies
contact: elizabeth.holzer@uconn.edu
Matthew Hughey
Research Interests: Race, Science, Religion, Media. Ongoing research project on Huey P. Newton, Black Nationalism, and varied theologies
contact: matthew.hughey@uconn.edu
Elizabeth Jacobs
Research Interests: Immigration, labor, gender, policy
contact: elizabeth.2.jacobs@uconn.edu
Christin Munsch
Research Interests: Gender, gender identity, work, family, health, discrimination, bias I am particularly looking for students to work on one of two projects. The first is a qualitative study of the medical healthcare experiences of transgender and non-binary people. The second is an experimental study of racial and ethnic discrimination among professors.
contact: christin.munsch@uconn.edu
Nancy Naples
Research Interests: Professor Naples could train and supervise a student in conducting interviews as part of an ongoing project, which could be done online.
contact: nancy.naples@uconn.edu
Jeremy Pais
Research Interests: The environment and sustainable urban development, natural disasters, migration, social stratification over the life course, quantitative methods, neighborhoods and community sociology
contact: jeremy.pais@uconn.edu
Kim Price-Glynn
Research Interests: Paid and unpaid carework, gender, and qualitative research methods
contact: kim.price-glynn@uconn.edu
Ingrid Semaan
Research Interests: social determinants of health, gender/race/class/sexuality-based violence, racial capitalism, fat studies
contact: ingrid.semaan@uconn.edu
Simon Yamawaki Shachter
Research Interests: Nonprofit organizations, politics, immigration, history, race, cities Interested students should inquire about possibility of working on an ongoing project, "Understanding Urban Political History,” where they would assist in reviewing archival documents from the 1800s and early 1900s from Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, to understand what politics was like in each of these cities, how it evolved over time, and how it involved, or not, immigrant groups, elites, and other private organizations.
contact: simonys@uconn.edu
Raja Staggers-Hakim
Research Interests: Racial ethnic health disparities, racism, substance use/substance use disorder, mental health, African Americans/Black, minoritized populations
contact: raja.staggers-hakim@uconn.edu
Jessica Yorks
Research Interests: Class/Poverty/Mobility, Inequality, Family, Education
contact: jessica.yorks@uconn.edu