IPR Welcomes Nine New Faculty Fellows

Fall 2005, Volume 27, Number 1

This fall, eight new faculty fellows and one visiting professor will join the Institute for Policy Research.

“We are extremely pleased to welcome this exciting group of faculty fellows into the IPR community,” said Jeff Manza, professor of sociology and IPR’s acting director in 2004-05. “These outstanding social scientists will play major roles in shaping IPR’s future.”

Larry V. Hedges
Board of Trustees Professor of Statistics and Social Policy
Ph.D., Mathematical Methods in Educational Research, Stanford University, 1980

A national leader in the fields of educational statistics and evaluation, new IPR Faculty Fellow Larry V. Hedges has been named one of eight Board of Trustees Professors at Northwestern, the university’s most distinguished academic position. He will hold appointments in statistics and education and social policy. Previously, he was Stella M. Rowley Professor at the University of Chicago, where he held appointments in education, psychology, sociology, and public policy.

His research straddles several fields—in particular those of sociology, psychology, and educational policy. He is best known for his work to develop statistical methods for meta-analysis (a statistical analysis of the results of multiple studies that combines their findings) in the social, medical, and biological sciences. It is a key component of evidence-based social research. Examples of some of his recent studies include understanding the costs of generating systematic reviews; the black-white gap in achievement test scores; and frameworks for international comparative studies on education.

Widely published, Hedges has authored or co-authored numerous journal articles and five books, including the seminal Statistical Methods for Meta-Analysis (with I. Olkin) and The Handbook of Research Synthesis (with H. Cooper).

He has been elected a member or fellow of numerous boards, associations, and professional organizations, including the National Academy of Education, the American Statistical Association, and the American Psychological Association. He chairs the Technical Advisory Group of the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse, an initiative to give educators and researchers a library of systematic reviews to aid in the development of evidence-based educational policy.

Jennifer Richeson
Associate Professor of Psychology
Ph.D., Social Psychology, Harvard University, 2000

Social psychologist Jennifer Richeson joins Northwestern and IPR from Dartmouth. Her main research interests revolve around contact between different races, prejudice and discrimination, and the categorization and identity of racial groups.

She led a study demonstrating how racial bias can impair cognitive functioning. In it, white college students were tested twice, first for racial bias and then for response inhibition after interacting with either white or black individuals. The study found that those with the highest racial biases experienced more cognitive difficulties following interracial contact. This finding, corroborated by subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), suggests that active suppression of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors impaired the students’ cognitive functioning.

Richeson was a visiting fellow at the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University in 2004-05.

James Druckman
AT&T Research Scholar, Associate Professor of Political Science
Ph.D., Political Science, University of California, San Diego, 1999

When he joins IPR this fall as a faculty fellow, James Druckman will already know his way around campus. The political scientist received his BA, with honors, from the university in 1993. He comes to Northwestern’s political science department from the University of Minnesota.

An expert in political preference formation, political communication, and coalition-building in parliamentary systems, Druckman has done extensive work on evaluating framing effects in politics (“framing” explores how the presentation of an issue will affect a citizen’s beliefs or behaviors). Other recent examples of his research include the effects of electronic mediation on negotiation and a comparative study of portfolio allocation in Eastern and Western Europe.

While at the University of Minnesota, he was named a 2004 McKnight Presidential Fellow, an award that recognizes its five most promising tenured associate professors.

Lincoln Quillian
Associate Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., Sociology, Harvard University, 1997

A social demographer, Lincoln Quillian is interested in social stratification, race and ethnicity, urban sociology, and quantitative research methods. Coming from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he will join the department of sociology, and IPR as a faculty fellow.

In analyzing quantitative data from diverse sources, Quillian is trying to understand social and racial stratification in American society. For example, he used U.S. Census data to investigate the contested issue of whether male joblessness in low-income black neighborhoods was a chronic problem. Between 1950 and 1990, he found it increased from 25 to 44 percent—a rate that was higher than it was for all men at the peak of the Great Depression. His current projects include studies of the consequences of urban spatial segregation among income groups and the development of racial stereotypes.

Quillian has been invited to be a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, CA.

Christopher Kuzawa
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Ph.D., Anthropology, Emory University, 2001

At Northwestern since 2002, anthropologist Christopher Kuzawa’s research spans maternal and fetal influences in child and adult health, human growth and development, epidemiology, evolutionary medicine, and cardiovascular disease in developing nations. His current projects investigate the influence of maternal/fetal nutrition and growth on adult health and function in the Philippines and intergenerational influences on health disparities in five U.S. cities.

He is an executive committee member of Cells to Society: The Center on Social Disparities and Health (C2S), a new cross-disciplinary effort housed at IPR. (Click here for related story.)

Kuzawa received a 2002 National Research Service Award, a postdoctoral training fellowship, in cardiovascular epidemiology.

Monica Prasad
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., Sociology, University of Chicago, 2000

A political sociologist, Monica Prasad arrived at Northwestern in 2004. She is currently at work on her book, The Politics of Free Markets (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press). In it, she examines the rise of neoliberal economic policies in the U.S., Britain, France, and West Germany between the first oil crisis in 1973 and the signing of the Maastricht treaty in 1992.

She is also examining the “defunding” of the American state, begun by Ronald Reagan and dramatically accelerated by George W. Bush. With colleagues, she is developing a new research agenda on political decision-making starting with the 2004 presidential election.

Prasad received a 2003-04 postdoctoral fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities/Social Science Research Council.

Juan Onésimo Sandoval
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 2002

Juan Onésimo Sandoval’s primary research interests cover spatial econometrics and demography, poverty and social welfare, urban sociology and planning, race relations, and transportation policy. He joined Northwestern’s department of sociology in 2002.

Sandoval is currently working on three research projects: transportation for vulnerable populations, neighborhood diversity and residential differentiation, and pan-ethnic diversity. His work examines the social, economic, and cultural life of the metropolis and analyzes the processes of building and maintaining systems of racial domination and differentiation.

His multimethod research projects are unified by an underlying theoretical concern with differentiation, stratification, and the recognition of social, cultural, and symbolic capital.

Sandoval has received research support from the Public Policy Institute of California and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Leslie McCall
Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995

Social demographer Leslie McCall examines how racial, educational, and gender inequality variously overlap and conflict with one another in labor markets throughout the United States. This was the subject of her book Complex Inequality: Gender, Class, and Race in the New Economy (Routledge, 2001), first runner-up for the C. Wright Mills Book Award, and several journal articles.

Her current research includes an ongoing study of economic inequality among women and an analysis of the impact of corporate restructuring (e.g., downsizing, subcontracting) on rising wage inequality. She is also examining the political consequences of rising wage inequality through a study of attitudes toward inequality and preferences for redistributive social policies.

Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Demos:
A Network of Ideas and Action, where she is a senior fellow.

McCall will be a visiting IPR faculty fellow in 2005-06.

Luojia Hu
Assistant Professor of Economics
Ph.D., Economics, Princeton University, 2000

Economist Luojia Hu has been a member of Northwestern’s department of economics since 2000 and was reappointed an IPR faculty fellow this year.

Hu’s research focuses on immigration and welfare, hiring decisions and compensation structures in firms, earnings dynamics, unemployment, and econometric methodology.

She is currently working on a project, Layoffs, Lemons, Race, and Gender, with IPR Faculty Fellow Christopher Taber. They are investigating whether layoffs have a “lemon effect,” that is whether discretionary layoffs by employers provide a negative signal to the outside market that the worker is of low quality, and how this effect varies with race and gender.

Hu has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, the W.E. Upjohn Institute, and the Searle Fund.

For more information about these new IPR faculty fellows, please visit www.northwestern.edu/ipr/people/faculty.html