Academic Outcomes

Isaac Ariail Reed ~ Thomas C. Sorensen Professor of Political and Social Thought and Professor of Sociology ~ University of Virginia      

PhD ~ 2007  “Outline of an Interpretive Sociology: Meaning, Theory, and History in Social Analysis”

Previous Placement: Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Virginia

Previous Placement: Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder

Honors and Awards:   

Marvin B. Sussman Dissertation Prize, Department of Sociology, Yale University (2008)

Junior Theorist Award, American Sociological Association Section on Theory (2014)

Lewis A. Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting, American Sociological Association (2015)

Lisa McCormick ~ Senior Lecturer in Sociology ~ University of Edinburgh, UK 

PhD ~ 2009 “Playing to Win: A Cultural Sociology of the International Music Competition”

Previous Placement: Lecturer, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh

Previous Placement: Associate Professor, Haverford College

Honors and Awards:   

SAGE prize in excellence and/or innovation for “Higher, Faster, Louder: Representations of the International Music Competition” Cultural Sociology, 3(1):5-30. 2010.

Ateş Altinordu ~ Assistant Professor ~ Sabanci University, Turkey             

PhD ~ 2010 “The Rise and Transformation of Religious Politics: Political Catholicism and Political Islam in Comparative Perspective”

Honors and Awards:   

Marvin B. Sussman Dissertation Prize, Department of Sociology, Yale University (2011)

Dominik Bartmanski ~ Assistant Professor ~ Humboldt University-Berlin, Germany     

PhD ~ 2011 “How Icons Work: Material Culture and Post-Communist Transformation in Berlin and Warsaw, 1989-2009”

Previous Placement: Assistant Professor, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

Previous Placement: European Social Fund Postdoctoral Fellow, Masaryk University

Honors and Awards:   

Marvin B. Sussman Dissertation Prize, Department of Sociology, Yale University (2012)

International Sociological Association (ISA) Junior Theorist Prize for, “How to become an iconic social thinker: the intellectual pursuits of Malinowski and Foucault,” European Journal of Social Theory 15(4), (2012)

Rui Gao ~ Assistant Professor ~ School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China       

PhD ~ 2011 “Eclipse and Memory: Public Representation of the War of Resistance in Maoist China and its Official Revision in Post-Mao Era”

Honors and Awards:   

Marvin B. Sussman Dissertation Prize, Department of Sociology, Yale University (2013)

John Addison Porter Prize, Yale University Graduate School (2011)

B. Nadya Jaworsky ~ Professor ~ Masaryk University, Czechia      

PhD ~ 2011 “”It’s just not Main Street anymore!” Mapping out the Boundaries of Belonging in a New Immigrant Gateway”

Previous Placement: Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Masaryk University, Czechia

Previous Placement: Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Masaryk University, Czechia

Andrew Junker ~ Regional Director, Mainland China and Hong Kong SAR ~ Yale-China Association/The Chinese University of Hong Kong     

PhD ~ 2012 “Sacred and Secular Protest in Chinese Diaspora: Falun Gong and the Chinese Democracy”

Previous Placement: Hong Kong Director, Yale-China Association, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Previous Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology, Valparaiso University

Previous Placement: Harper Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor, Society of Fellows and Social Sciences Collegiate Division, University of Chicago

Honors and Awards:

Marvin B. Sussman Dissertation Prize, Department of Sociology, Yale University (2014)

Matthew Norton ~ Associate Professor ~ University of Oregon     

PhD ~ 2012 “Culture and Coercion: Piracy and State Power in the Early Modern English Empire”

Previous Placement: Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Oregon

Honors and Awards:   

Clifford Geertz Prize for Best Article, Sociology of Culture Section, American Sociological Association (2015) for “Classification and Coercion: The Destruction of Piracy in theEnglish Maritime System.” American Journal of Sociology 119 (6).

Samuel Nelson ~ Assistant Professor ~ McGill University, Canada            

PhD ~ 2013 “A Global Millennium: Empire and the Invention of Evangelicalism on the Margins of the Confessional State, 1688-1745”

Previous Placement: Postdoctoral Researcher, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Michael Yarbrough ~ Associate Professor ~ John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York      

PhD ~ 2013 “I Now Declare You: State Law and the Making of Marriage in Post-Apartheid South Africa”

Previous Placement: Assistant Professor of Law and Society, John Jay College, City University of New York

Previous Placement: Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, SA

Honors and Awards:   

Marvin B. Sussman Dissertation Prize, Department of Sociology, Yale University (2015)

Thomas Crosbie ~ Associate Professor ~ Centre for Joint Operations, Royal Danish Defence College, Denmark           

PhD ~ 2014 “Democratic Oversight and Military Autonomy: The U.S. Army’s Management of American Journalism, 1939-2004”

Previous Placement: Assistant Professor, Military Operations, Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen DK

Previous Placement: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for Research on Military Organization, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland

Honors and Awards:   

Army Research Institute Grant (co-PI Meredith Kleykamp) (2015)

Alison Gerber ~ Associate professor/Senior lecturer ~ Lund University, Sweden        

PhD ~ 2014 “Art Work? Tradition, Rationalization, and the Valuation of Contemporary Artistic Practice”

Previous Placement: Postdoctoral Fellow, Lund University, SwedenPrevious Placement: Postdoctoral Fellow, Lund University, Sweden

Previous Placement: Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden

Joseph Klett ~ Lecturer ~ University of California, Berkeley             

PhD ~ 2015 “The Social Life of Noise”

Previous Placement: Research Fellow,  Institute for Research, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Previous Placement: Research Associate, Science and Justice Research Center, University of California-Santa Cruz

Previous Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz

Sorcha Brophy ~ Assistant Professor ~ Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University        

PhD ~ 2015 “Making Morals: Standard-Setting in Organizations”

Previous Placement: Lecturer, Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago

Previous Placement: Kenneth P. Dietrich Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh 

Timothy Malacarne ~ Associate Professor ~ Nevada State University      

PhD ~ 2015 “Schooling as a Social Process: Creation and Consequence of Adolescent Society in American High Schools”

Previous Placement: Assistant Professor of Data Science, Nevada State College

Previous Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of Data Science, Mount Holyoke College

Jensen Sass ~ Postdoctoral Associate ~ Comparative Policy Analysis, University of Vienna, Austria  

PhD ~ 2015 “Remaking Monsanto: Commodification as Corporate Strategy”

Previous Placement: Braithwaite Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University

Previous Placement: Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra, Australia

Shai Dromi ~ Associate Senior Lecturer on Sociology ~ Harvard University         

PhD ~ 2016 “The Religious Origins of Transnational Relief: Calvinism, Humanitarianism, and the Genesis of Social Fields”

Previous Placement: College Fellow, Harvard University, Department of Sociology

Previous Placement: Lecturer, Harvard University, Department of Sociology

Honors and Awards:   

Marvin B. Sussman Dissertation Prize, Department of Sociology, Yale University (2018)

Certificate of Excellence in Teaching - The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University (2018)

Best Graduate Student Paper Award, American Sociological Association Section on Global Transnational Sociology (2016)

Mira Debs ~ Lecturer, Department of Sociology ~ Yale University              

PhD ~ 2016 “Diverse Parents, Desirable Schools: Public Montessori, Fit and Conflict in the Era of School Choice”

Previous Placement: Executive Director, Education Studies. Yale University

Isabel Jijón ~ Lecturer on Sociology ~ Harvard University                 

PhD ~ 2018 “The dignity of working children? Globalization and morality in debates over child labor.”

Previous Placement: Fox Fellowship, Yale University

Honors and Awards:   

21st Century Dissertation Prize, to a distinguished sociology dissertation that contributes to public policy or the public interest. Yale University (2018)

Mildred Priest Frank Prize for Best Senior Thesis in Sociology, Yale University (2011)

Elisabeth Becker ~ Assistant Professor and Freigeist Fellow ~ Max Weber Institute for Sociology at Heidelberg University, Germany        

PhD ~ 2018 ”Unsettled Islam: A Comparative Study of European Capital City Mosques”

Previous Placement: Assistant Professor of Sociology, University College Dublin

Previous Placement: Postdoctoral Associate, Religion and Its Publics, University of Virginia & Luce Foundation

Todd Madigan ~ Assistant Professor of Sociology ~ Coastal Carolina University       

PhD ~ 2019 “The Rules of Meaning Making: Toward a Theory of Cultural Syntax”

Previous Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, Coastal Carolina University

Previous Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Till Hilmar ~ Postdoctoral Researcher ~ Department of Sociology, Vienna University, Austria 

PhD ~ 2019 ”History is Other People: Relational Change, Memory and Market Justice in post-1989 East Germany and the Czech Republic”

Previous Placement: Postdoctoral Researcher, SOCIUM – Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy, University of Bremen, Germany

Dicky Yangzom ~ Lecturer ~ New York University   

PhD ~ 2020 ”Curating the Self: Second-Hand Fashion and New York City”

Non-Academic Outcomes

Tanya Goodman ~ Owner/Publisher of Chapel Lane Media, South Africa             

PhD ~ 2004 “Setting the Stage for a “new” South Africa:  A Cultural Approach to the Truth & Reconciliation Commission”

Previous Placement: Independent Researcher, Multimedia project: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Martin de Santos ~ Co-Founder and Director of Tipitap    

PhD ~ 2007 “Public Numbers and Fact-Totems: Country Risk and the Cultural Life of Statistics in Argentina 2001”

Previous Placement: CEO, Product & Strategy @Handouts: Simple classroom worklow(Link is external) • Co-Founder

Caroline Gray ~ Investigator and Qualitative Lead Methodologist, Center for Innovation to Implementation, U. S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs  

PhD ~ 2010 “Disfigured Forms: Surgical Alterations of the Body”

Previous Placement: Senior Qualitative Research Associate, Palo Alto Medical Foundation

Previous Placement: Associate Service Fellow, Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Elizabeth Breese ~ Vice President of Product Marketing, LINQ     

PhD ~ 2012 “Interpreting the News: A Cultural Sociology of Journalistic Discourses in the United States”

Previous Placement: Marketing Director, Panorama Education, Boston

Previous Placement: Senior Content and Digital Marketing Strategist, Crimson Hexagon, Boston

Sarah Egan ~ Eurofins              

PhD ~ 2012 “Hounded Out: Performative Success and Political Failure in the English Pro-hunting Movement”

Previous Placement: Learning Content Manager - ‎GoConqr, Ireland

Inge Schmidt 

PhD ~ 2012 “When Good Ballots Go Bad: Voting ritual (and its failure) in the United States”

Yasushi Tanaka-Gútiez            

PhD ~ 2014 “Towards a New Cultural Sociology of Mass Mobilizations: A Comparative Analysis of Occupy Wall Street”

Carolyn Ly-Donovan ~ Consultant, Factor.AI, New York, NY           

PhD ~ 2015 “Meaning and Merit in American Municipal Firefighting”

Previous Placement: Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Augustana University

Jin Su Joo ~ Vice-President, Strategy and Social Science, Throughline Strategy, Inc., Toronto, Canada                 

PhD ~ 2016 “The Cultural Logic of Heritage Redevelopment Mega-Projects: The Distillery District in Toronto and Cheonggyecheon in Seoul”

Previous Placement: Strategist, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Fresh Squeezed Ideas

Andrew C. Cohen ~ Strategy Director, MONKS        

PhD ~ 2017 “Advertising as Cultural Production”

Previous Placement: Jr. Strategist, Phenomenon(Link is external)

Vanessa Bittner ~ Research Consultant, Appinio, Hamburg, Germany   

PhD ~ 2023 “The Dark Side of Iconicity: How Controversial Icons become Lightning Rods for Passionate Audiences”