Keera Allendorf is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University. Dr. Allendorf investigates how and why family behaviors vary and change over time, as well as how family behaviors shape well-being. Geographically, she has worked on family life in India and Nepal for over two decades, including ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of large-scale surveys. Dr. Allendorf’s publications have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Demography, and the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Emily Meanwell is the study director for the Sociological Research Practicum and the director of the Social Science Research Commons at Indiana University. Her research has focused on intersections of culture, inequality, and education, including the emergence of U.S. educational policy, the experiences of college students on the autism spectrum, the experiences of homelessness, and more.
Zhaodi Chen is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at Indiana University. Zhaodi uses mixed methods to study how public opinion and discourse are formed or negotiated among different social actors in a digital era. Before coming to Indiana, she spent most of her life in Guangdong, China and two years in Chicago.
Callie Cleckner is a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University. Broadly, she researches how organizations and cultures jointly construct issues related to race, ethnicity, and gender. Her dissertation project is a qualitative investigation of gun shows in Indiana. Callie was born and raised in Eastern North Carolina.
Yanming is from China and has lived in Hong Kong and New York City and now fallen in love with Bloomington. He studies a variety of issues related to Asian Americans, including their voting behaviors, health insurance coverage, identity choices, and social movements. He spends his free time enjoying the great outdoors with his wife and their dog Bruno.
Jennifer Jiwon Lee is a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University. Her research largely focuses on how social interactions and culture interact to perpetuate gender inequality in our society. She is originally from South Korea but spent most of her life in China and now the United States!
Katya is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. She received her BA in Sociology from Yonsei University. She is particularly interested in how educational systems are related to an individual’s health and how these relationships vary across gender and life course.
Anjali Biswas is a PhD student in Sociology at Indiana University. Her focus is on how ideas of nationalism, religion, and identity play out in people’s day to day lives. Anjali primarily uses qualitative methods. Anjali grew up in California but went to school out in Massachusetts before coming here to Indiana!
Yunmyung Cho is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at Indiana University. She is broadly interested in gender, intimate relationships, and culture. Her previous research has examined how gendered expectations of family life shape marriage and childbearing decisions in South Korea.
Madeline Flores is a PhD student in the Sociology department at IU. Broadly, her research interests include gender, youth, and social inequality. Her work focuses on how young people assess gender roles and gender inequality in their everyday lives and in wider society.
Da Eun Jung is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. Her research interests include race and ethnicity, Asian and Asian American studies, crime and criminal justice, and gender.
Maggie Lawler is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at Indiana University. Maggie uses qualitative methods to research educational inequalities and disability. Before coming to Indiana Maggie got her B.A. at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and her M.A. at the University of Chicago.
Luis Lopez is a graduate student in sociology from Salt Lake City, Utah. Luis's research interests include social networks, methodology, and sociology of mental health. In his free time, Luis likes yoga and chihuahua watching.
Prior to joining the department of sociology in 2022, Roberto D. Ortiz graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Georgia with degrees in Sociology, Women's Studies, and Music. His undergraduate thesis assessed how restaurant patrons discursively construct and perpetuate orientalist narratives based on their experiences at hibachi steakhouses. Roberto is broadly interested in race & ethnicity, social psychology, identity, organizations, and theory. Roberto is proud to be a first-generation, low-income, Latinx student.
Brandy is a first year PhD student in the Sociology department at Indiana university. Currently, Brandy’s research interests include race, gender and medical sociology. Brandy is from Dayton, Ohio and enjoys mentoring first-generation students.
Tiffanie Vo is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University in Bloomington. She earned her MA in Sociology in 2022 and BA in Human Relations and Sociology in 2020 from the University of Oklahoma. Her broad research interests include race/ethnicity, Asian American studies, and mixed methods.
Noelle Cierpilowski is a first-generation undergraduate student at Indiana University majoring in Sociology. They are interested in research topics including gender, class inequality, and family structure.
Nikitha Donthi is an undergraduate student at Indiana University majoring in Entrepreneurship and International Business and minoring in Sociology. She is particularly interested in researching gender and cultural issues, as well as the relationship between sociology and business.
Megan Myles is an undergraduate student in biology and sociology at Indiana University. Megan currently works in an ecology lab at IU studying plant-soil interactions. She is interested in studying agriculture and its biological and sociological implications.
Grace Prangle is a Junior at Indiana University studying Psychology and Premedical Sciences. She also has minors in Sociology and Biology. Grace’s areas of interest include medical sociology and how class systems influence medical outcomes, along with society’s influence on day-to-day life.
Sophia Schreck is an undergraduate student at Indiana University studying Neuroscience and Clinical Psychological Science with a minor in Sociology. She is interested in the intersection between sociology and mental health within the medical field.
Wei Wang, who goes by David, is a senior at Indiana University majoring in linguistics and journalism and minoring in sociology. In graduate school, he will study media’s roles in society using qualitative and quantitative methods. One of his research interests is how media framing of issues shape public opinion about them. David comes from Shanghai, China but will spend many of the coming years studying in the U.S.
Adeola Yusuf is an undergraduate Biotechnology student that is also pursuing a minor in Social science and medicine at Indiana University. She had always had an interest in family dynamics and how certain things transpire generations later. So this research is a great opportunity to learn more about these aspects of family. She is originally from Nigeria but has spent a good amount of her life in Indiana.
