Social Sciences in Practice Postdoctoral Fellowship
The Social Sciences in Practice (SSIP) Postdoctoral Fellowship is a new initiative by the Dean in collaboration with the Vice Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development that brings together exceptional young scholars from different disciplines within the Social Sciences. The Fellows are selected based on their interest and excellence in research that focuses on contemporary societal problems and solutions. Each SSIP fellow has two UCLA faculty sponsors. During their residence at UCLA the fellows are encouraged to join and contribute to our community in various ways. Each fellow teaches two courses in their host department or program. The fellows participate in a weekly workshop and organize a speaker series that brings together scholars interested in the practical implications of theories and findings in the Social Sciences. The SSIP fellowship program is directed by Dr. Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, Director of Programs in the Division of Social Sciences.
Elana D. Buch
Anthropology; Faculty Sponsors: Carole Browner, Anthropology, and A. E. Benjamin, Social Welfare
Elana Buch received her Ph.D. from the Joint Program in Social Work and Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the politics and everyday practice of caregiving in the urban United States. Dr. Buch's dissertation research examined the ways that paid home care of older adults in Chicago, IL sustained autonomous personhood while also reproducing intersecting forms of racial, class and gender inequality. Her next project examines the moral and political implications of the human costs incurred in the aftermath of war though ethnographic research with injured veterans, their families and their paid caregivers. This new research investigates the ways government programs that provide care for disabled veterans shape novel ethics of intimate relations while reconfiguring the moral relationship between persons and the state. Dr. Buch is active in a variety of professional and advocacy groups working to improve local and federal care policy.
Dr. Buch has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa starting Fall 2012.
Iris Hui
Geography; Faculty Sponsors: John Agnew, Geography, and Jeff Lewis, Political Science
Iris Hui received her PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation examines the growing geographic polarization of partisan preferences in the U.S. and explores how it contributes to elite polarization in Congress. Hui's research interests include political behavior, race, ethnicity and political geography in American politics. In particular, she is interested in incorporating Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques, spatial statistics and other interdisciplinary approaches in her research.
Dr. Hui will be the Research Director for the Political Psychology Research Group in the Departments of Communication and Political Science at Stanford University starting Fall 2012.
Loan Le
Political Science; Faculty Sponsors: David Sears, Political Science & Psychology, and P. Ong, School of Public Affairs
Loan K. Le received her Ph.D. (2010) from the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley, where her developed areas of emphasis include race, ethnicity, immigration, political behavior, and social psychology. Loan's dissertation considered contextual cues such as the apparent effects of ethnic, minority and poverty spatial concentrations on immigrant political incorporation. At UC Berkeley, she served as a Graduate Research Fellow with the National Science Foundation and with the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. Prior to attending graduate school, she received dual degrees in Political Science and in Spanish from UC Irvine, where she graduated double magna cum laude and was honored as Student Commencement Speaker for the School of Social Sciences. She has also served as a Coro Foundation Public Affairs Fellow in Los Angeles, California and as a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar in Heredia, Costa Rica.
Dr. Le will be a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at UCLA during the academic year 2012-2013.
Asia Leeds
Afro-American Studies; Faculty Sponsors: Robert Hill, History, and Cesar Ayala, Sociology, also with support from Brenda Stevenson
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Asia Leeds completed her B.A. in History at Fordham University and Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in African Diaspora Studies. Her dissertation, titled "Representations of Race, Entanglements of Power: Whiteness, Garveyism, and Redemptive Geographies in Costa Rica, 1921-1950," explores the politics of race and belonging and the incorporation of Afro-Caribbean immigrants into the white-identified Central American nation. Asia is especially interested in the ways that discourses and representations of Africa and blackness inform the marginalization of persons of African descent in the Americas. While at UCLA, Asia will teach courses that highlight the intersections of race, gender, citizenship, and nationalism.
Dr. Leeds has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in the African Diaspora and the World program at Spelman College starting Fall 2012.
Jade Lo
Sociology; Faculty Sponsors: Gabriel Rossman Sociology & Lynne Zucker Sociology
Jade (Yu-Chieh) Lo got her Ph.D. from the Department of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California in 2010. As a SSIP fellow, she is housed in the Department of Sociology.
At the most general level, she is interested in cultural and structural approaches to organizational studies. Specifically, she draws on cultural-cognitive perspective to examine the emergence of new organizational fields and the change of existing social or institutional arrangements. While recognizing the power of structural forces and cognitive stickiness, she also allows for entrepreneurial capacity (e.g. improvisation based on interests, idiosyncratic experience, and varying levels of creativity and willingness to risk doing something different) in examining these issues. This theoretical stance is reflected in her dissertation research -- in both the questions that she asks and the answers that she attempts to provide.
Dr. Lo will be an Assistant professor of Entrepreneurship at the Department of Management, Drexel University starting in Fall 2012.
Sarolta Laczó
Economics; Faculty Sponsors: Maurizio Mazzocco, Economics and Maria Casanova, Economics
Sarolta Laczó earned her Ph.D. from the Toulouse School of Economics in October 2009 with a thesis on Informal Risk Sharing. In the 2009/2010 academic year she was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.
Laczó's research focuses on risk sharing, both in villages in developing countries and within the household in developed countries. She has studied how government policies are likely to interact with existing informal insurance arrangement in poor villages. In ongoing projects, she is working on how risk sharing groups are likely to form, how consumption insurance matters for production decisions, and how intra-household insurance influences labor supply
Dr. Laczó has accepted the position of Researcher at the Institute for Economic Analysis (IAE-CSIC), and will be an Affiliated Professor at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, Spain starting Fall 2012.