Ruby Bafu
Credentials: Pronouns she/her/hers
Date Ph.D. Received
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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Madeline Brighouse Glueck
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2027
Interest Areas
Stratification, Education, Gender
Advisor
Eric Grodsky
Dissertation title
A Tale of Two Trends: The Rise of Graduate Degrees and Women
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Griffin Bur
Date Ph.D. Expected
May 2027
Interest Areas
Economic sociology, inequality, methods, stratification
Advisor
Christine Schwartz
Dissertation Title
“Measuring Income, Measuring Inequality: The Critical Role of Capital in US Income Inequality”
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Sadie Dempsey
Credentials: Pronouns she/her
Date Ph.D. Received
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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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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Anna Milewski
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2027
Interest Areas
Political Sociology, Social Movements, Sociology of Religion, Race and Ethnicity, Quantitative and Mixed Methods
Advisors
Ivan Ermakoff, Chaeyoon Lim
Dissertation Title
“Religion as a Social Movement Resource in the Transition to the 21st Century”
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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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Peter Ramand
Date Ph.D. Expected:
June 2027
Interest Areas:
Class analysis; political sociology; quantitative and qualitative methods.
Advisor:
Ivan Ermakoff
Dissertation title:
The British Class Matrix
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Sara R. Ronnkvist
Credentials: Pronouns she/her/hers
Date Ph.D. Received
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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Danielle Schmidt-Larios
Date Ph.D. Expected
Spring 2027
Interest Areas
Rural Sociology; Environmental Sociology; Community Development; Mixed-methods
Advisor
Katherine Curtis
Dissertation Title
“The transition of production agricultural land to conservation reserves across two cases”
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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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Avery Warner
Date Ph.D. Expected
May 2027
Interest Areas
Crime, Deviance, and Social Control; Social Stratification; Immigration; Gender
Advisor
Michael Light
Dissertation Title
“Criminal Justice Contact, Labor Markets, and Economic Mobility”
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Benny Witkovsky
Credentials: Pronouns he/him/his
Date Ph.D. Received
Spring 2026
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