Ruby Bafu
Credentials: Pronouns she/her/hers
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2025
Interest Areas
Race; gender; education; children and youth; online learning; social inequality; and qualitative methods
Advisor
Monica Grant
Dissertation Title
“Student-Teacher Interactions in the Context of Alternative Education”
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Rebecca Bier
Credentials: Pronouns she/her/hers
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2026
Interest Areas
Sociology of education, social stratification, early childhood education and care, and quantitative methods
Advisor
Eric Grodsky
Dissertation Title
“Disparities in access and enrollment in preschool in the United States: Impacts on children, mothers, and teachers”
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Daniela Campos Ugaz
Credentials: Pronouns she/her/hers
Date Ph.D. Expected
Fall 2025
Interest Areas
Work and Labor; Economic Sociology; Comparative Political Economy; Global and Transnational Sociology; Law and Society; Gender; Migration; Latin America.
Advisor
Gay Seidman
Dissertation Title
“The Politics of Skills Shortages: Labor Sourcing in the Transition to the Knowledge Economy in the United States, Germany, and Costa Rica”
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John Canfield
Credentials: Pronouns he/him/his
Date Ph.D. expected
May 2026
Interest Areas
Rural Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Community-Based Research, Agrifood Systems, Environmental Governance
Advisors
Katherine Curtis and Michael Bell
Dissertation Title
“Crossing the Boundaries of Capitalism and Community: Multistakeholder Networks and Collaborative Conservation in Montana’s Northern Great Plains”
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Lindsay Cannon
Credentials: Pronouns she/her/hers
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2026
Interest Areas
Social Demography, Medical Sociology, Sociology of Fertility and Reproduction, Family Sociology, Gender-Based Violence, Health
Advisors
Jenna Nobles & Marcy Carlson
Dissertation Title
“A Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding Chronic Disease and Fertility in the United States”
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Sadie Dempsey
Credentials: Pronouns she/her
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2025
Interest Areas
Political Sociology, Democracy, Social Movements, Social Inequality, Civil Society, Political Communication, Ethnography and Qualitative Methods
Advisor
Mustafa Emirbayer
Dissertation Title
“Expanding Democracy: An Ethnography of Engaged Citizenship in Wisconsin”
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Alexis M. Dennis
Credentials: she/her
Date Ph.D. Expected
May 2026
Interest Areas
Higher Education & Graduate Communities; Poverty & Social Mobility; Life Histories and Narrative Analysis
Advisor
Pamela Oliver
Dissertation Title
“Straddling Fences: Elite Academia, Graduate Education, and the Pursuit of Community”
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Nona Maria Gronert
Credentials: Pronouns she/her/hers
Date Ph.D. Received
Fall 2025
Interest Areas
Gender, Law & Society, Social Movements, and Sexual Violence
Advisors
Myra Marx Ferree and Chaeyoon Lim
Dissertation Title
“The Promise and Peril of Title IX Addressing Sexual Violence: A University Case Study, 1972–2017”
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Amy Jones Haug
Credentials: Pronouns she/her/hers
Date Ph.D. Received
2020
Interest Areas
Race and Ethnicity; Ethnography; Theory; Sociology of Law and Public Health
Advisor
Jane Collins
Dissertation Committee Members
Pamela Oliver, John Eason, Alice Goffman, Bianca Baldridge
Dissertation Title
“Diversity as the Modern Racial Incorporation Strategy and the Unseen Burden of Diversity-Work”
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Jungmyung Kim
Credentials: Pronouns he/him
Date Ph.D. Expected
May 2025
Interest Areas
Organizations, Work and Occupations, Cultural Sociology, Social Inequality, Criminal Justice, Methods
Advisor
Robert Freeland
Dissertation Title
“Police Resistance to Institutional Changes through Complexity: A Study of Occupational Identity Maintenance”
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Loren Peabody
Credentials: Pronouns he/him/his
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2026
Interest Areas
Communities and Urban Sociology; Political Sociology; Poverty; Class Analysis and Historical Change; Sociology of Economic Change and Development; Environmental Sociology
Advisor
Ivan Ermakoff
Dissertation Title
“The Politics of Public Participation in Land Use Governance in Chicago”
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Sara R. Ronnkvist
Credentials: Pronouns she/her/hers
Date Ph.D. Expected
May 2026
Interest Areas
Environmental demography, migration, spatial sociology, big data
Advisor
Katherine J. Curtis
Dissertation Title
Post-disaster migration in the United States
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Michael Topping
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2026
Interest Areas
Demography and Ecology; Aging and the Life Course; Social Stratification; Medical Sociology
Advisor(s)
Michal Engelman and Katherine Curtis
Dissertation Title
“The Place-Based Origins of Cognitive Disparities in Old Age”
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Benny Witkovsky
Credentials: Pronouns he/him/his
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2025
Interest Areas
Political Sociology; Community and Urban Sociology; Comparative-Historical Sociology; Polarization; Urban Governance
Advisors
Mustafa Emirbayer
Dissertation Title
“Fig Leave and Fortress: Nonpartisan Politics in a Polarized Time”
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To be placed on the “Ph.D.s on the Job Market” webpage of the Department of Sociology website, e-mail soc_communications@ssc.wisc.edu with the following information and materials:
1. Name
2. Pronouns (if you wish)
3. Date Ph.D. expected
4. Interest Areas
5. Advisor(s)
6. Dissertation title
7. Curriculum vitae (pdf)
8. Personal website
9. Headshot photograph (.jpg or .png)
10. Email address