Students On the Market

Find information about current University of Minnesota sociology PhD candidates now or soon to be on the job market.

Sarah Catherine Billups

Billups CV
Advisors: Teresa Swartz & Ann Meier
Research Interests: Gender, culture, and housing.
Dissertation Title: "Mortgages without Marriages: Single Homebuying in the Contemporary U.S."

Erez Garnai

Garnai CV
Advisor: Joachim Savelsberg
Research Interests: Sociology of Law, Punishment, Social Problems, Drug Laws, Legal Consciousness, Institutional Ethnography
Dissertation Title: "The Spirit of the Law: Underage Drinking, Policing and Control on Campus"

Aimzhan Iztayeva

Iztayeva CV
Advisor: Ann Meier
Research Interests:  Gender, labor market, care work, inequality.
Dissertation Title:  "Custodial Single Fathers and Employment Discrimination: Penalized or Protected?"

Ethan Johnson

Johnson CV
Advisor: Penny Edgell
Research Interests: Culture, Inequality, Urban Sociology, Institutions
Dissertation Title:  “The Friction Between Winning Policy and Winning Results: Reimagining and Rebuilding a Transportation Network during Climate and Racial Justice Crises in Minneapolis”

Miray Philips

Philips CV
Advisor: Joachim Savelsberg
Research Interests: Religion; Migration; Human Rights; Knowledge; Culture; Politics; US-Middle East
Dissertation Title: "Transnational Politics of Christian Persecution: Contested Advocacy on Middle East Christians in US Foreign Policy."

Victoria Piehowski

Piehowski CV
Advisor: Josh Page
Research Interests: Sociology of Punishment, Violence, Medicalization, Political Sociology, Race, Class, Gender, Feminist and Qualitative Methods 
Dissertation Title: "The Political Uses of Trauma: Establishing and Expanding Veterans Treatment Courts in Minnesota "

Michael Soto

Soto CV
Advisors: Joachim Savelsberg
Research Interests:  Cultural Sociology, Inequality, Latin America (Colombia), Peace and Conflict Studies, Relational Sociology, Social Networks
Dissertation Title:  "The Social Reintegration of Ex-Combatants in Colombia and Northern Ireland"

Ryan Steel

Steel CV
Advisors: Josh Page and Teresa Gowan
Research Interests: Drugs and Drug Policy, Social Control, Governance, and Power, The Body and Embodiment, Health and Medicine, Institutional formation and authority, Criminalization and Medicalization, Social theory
Dissertation Title:  "Making Marijuana Model: Governing Bodies in Minnesota's Medical Cannabis Program."