Research
Since July 2015, I have been Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. My research brings together the sociology of race/ethnicity and the sociology of international migration by examining settlement and discrimination related challenges facing Middle Eastern and North African (MENA)-heritage migrants in North America.
Informed by unresolved tensions in the literatures on assimilation and racialization, my research program cuts across class, ethnicity, and citizenship differences to understand the broader social forces that racialize MENA communities as white/not-white, welcome/unwelcome, compatible/incompatible and invisible/hyper-visible in the Canadian and American polity. For this work, I was recently awarded the Province of Ontario's Early Researcher Award ($140,000; March 2018).
My first project, on the racialization of Iranians in the U.S., has yielded 3 sole-authored peer-reviewed journal articles (with a fourth article currently under R&R) and a sole-authored book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race, published September 2017 with Stanford University Press.
Two ongoing projects extend my research on MENA racialization into new field settings and methodological approaches:
By interrogating how complex identities are trafficked across lines and borders, my research program contributes to policy efforts meant to create more inclusive, healthy and just societies.
Teaching
At UofT, I teach an MA/PhD seminar on the Soc of Race/Ethnicity; a 4th-year undergrad course on anti-Muslim racism; a 3rd-year undergrad course on Soc of Migration and a 2nd-year undergrad course on research design.
Background
My MA (2008) and PhD (2012) are in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara and my BA (2004) is in Sociology from Smith College, where I stayed for two years following graduation to help recruit the largest cohort of Pell Grant recipients of any liberal arts college in the U.S. Before starting at UofT, I was a Center for Faculty Diversity (CFD) Postdoctoral Fellow at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania.
I live in Toronto with my spouse, Clayton Childress (also a sociologist at UofT), and our 4-year-old daughter.
Since July 2015, I have been Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. My research brings together the sociology of race/ethnicity and the sociology of international migration by examining settlement and discrimination related challenges facing Middle Eastern and North African (MENA)-heritage migrants in North America.
Informed by unresolved tensions in the literatures on assimilation and racialization, my research program cuts across class, ethnicity, and citizenship differences to understand the broader social forces that racialize MENA communities as white/not-white, welcome/unwelcome, compatible/incompatible and invisible/hyper-visible in the Canadian and American polity. For this work, I was recently awarded the Province of Ontario's Early Researcher Award ($140,000; March 2018).
My first project, on the racialization of Iranians in the U.S., has yielded 3 sole-authored peer-reviewed journal articles (with a fourth article currently under R&R) and a sole-authored book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race, published September 2017 with Stanford University Press.
Two ongoing projects extend my research on MENA racialization into new field settings and methodological approaches:
- Building on a recent pilot study funded by SSHRC and the Government of Canada's Ministry of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship, I am Principal Investigator on a newly funded 2018-23 SSHRC Insight Grant ($349,649) to study integration and settlement related challenges among Syrian newcomers to Toronto (with co-investigators Melissa Milkie and Ito Peng and a team of 4 graduate and 6 undergraduate students);
- I am a co-investigator on an experimental survey to understand how everyday people categorize others across dimensions of race in the U.S. (with Ariela Schachter and René Flores).
By interrogating how complex identities are trafficked across lines and borders, my research program contributes to policy efforts meant to create more inclusive, healthy and just societies.
Teaching
At UofT, I teach an MA/PhD seminar on the Soc of Race/Ethnicity; a 4th-year undergrad course on anti-Muslim racism; a 3rd-year undergrad course on Soc of Migration and a 2nd-year undergrad course on research design.
Background
My MA (2008) and PhD (2012) are in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara and my BA (2004) is in Sociology from Smith College, where I stayed for two years following graduation to help recruit the largest cohort of Pell Grant recipients of any liberal arts college in the U.S. Before starting at UofT, I was a Center for Faculty Diversity (CFD) Postdoctoral Fellow at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania.
I live in Toronto with my spouse, Clayton Childress (also a sociologist at UofT), and our 4-year-old daughter.