see also: Dissertations
Alumni Profiles
Browse the list of our alumni by year of graduation.
(*Scroll to the bottom for information on how to send in your profile or to request an update to this page.)
Sonia Y. Rab Alam, PhD, MPHPhD Sociology, 2016 Sonia Y. Rab Alam is a UX (user experience) Researcher at Facebook currently working on the Pages product. She finished her PhD in Sociology at UCSF in December 2016 and was an Assistant Adjunct Professor at Mills College before moving to the tech sector. Her dissertation examined constructions of value in [and] the biomedical futures of consumer health technologies, such as Fitbit activity trackers and the Apple watch. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at investor pitch events and health tech “meet ups,” as well as interviews with venture capitalists and founders of health tech startups, she explored the kinds of value and futures imagined in and made possible by these technologies and considered their implications. She also holds a BA in Sociology and Gender & Women’s Studies from Bowdoin College and an MPH from the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University. |
|
Sean Arayasirikul, PhDPhD Sociology, 2016 Dr. Arayasirikul (they/them) is an Associate Professor In Residence at the University of California, Irvine. Their research is focused on the social etiology of HIV/AIDS, intersectional stigma, discrimination and oppression. They also study the implementation science of mobile and digital health interventions, specifically the implementation of text messaging, digital navigation, and ecological momentary assessments in clinical and non-clinical settings. Their work has been funded by NIH, HRSA, SAMHSA, and RWJF. They are currently a RWJF Interdisciplinary Research Leader Fellow working on a project called, Not One More, investigating the social etiology, root causes, and underlying mechanisms of intersectional violence — the product of systemic racism, sexism and transphobia — that trans women of color face. |
|
Monica Casper, PhDPhD Sociology, 1995 Monica J. Casper, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University. She has published several books, including the award-winning The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery; The Body: Social and Cultural Dissections; and Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life. Her newest book, Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z, was published in 2022 by Rutgers University Press. She is founding co-editor of the NYU Press book series “Biopolitics: Medicine, Technoscience, and Health in the 21st Century” and the University of Arizona book series “The Feminist Wire Books.” |
|
Jia-shin Chen, MD, PhDPhD Sociology 2009 I first worked as an attending psychiatrist (my old occupation) in a university-affiliated hospital in Taiwan after I acquired my doctoral degree from UCSF and later taught medical humanity courses in Taipei Medical University. In 2012, I quit my clinical practice, obtained a faculty position in National Yang Ming University (NYMU), and moved into academia, focusing on researching and teaching. Over the years I have published my research findings in journals such as International Journal of Drug Policy, History of Human Sciences, Health, Harm Reduction Journal, Sociology of Health and Illness, BioSocieties, and Social Theory and Health. I also edited a Chinese book with a colleague on psychiatry and society, titled Abnormal People? Governance of Psychiatry and Modernity in Taiwan. At present I am Associate Professor and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Society, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU), Taiwan. |
|
Adele Clarke, PhDPhD Sociology 1980 Adele E. Clarke, PhD, was Professor of Sociology and History of Health Sciences, at UC San Francisco until her passing in 2024. Her books include Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and “Problems of Sex” (1998, Fleck Award, Society for Social Studies of Science and Basker Award, Society for Medical Anthropology), Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory after the Postmodern Turn (2005, Cooley Award, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction), co-edited The Right Tools for the Job in Twentieth Century Life Sciences (1992), Women’s Health: Differences and Complexities (1997), Revisioning Women, Health, and Healing (1999), Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S. (2010), Situational Analysis in Practice (2015), Situational Analysis in Practice (2nd edition, 2022), and co-authored Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Interpretive Turn (2018). She received the Bernal Prize (Society for Social Studies of Science, 2012), the Helen Nahm Award (UCSF School of Nursing), the Reeder Award (Medical Sociology Section, ASA, 2015), and sessions honoring her contributions at both the American Anthropological Association (2012) and the Pacific Sociological Association (2019) meetings. |
|
Taylor M. Cruz, PhDSociology PhD, 2018 Taylor M. Cruz is Associate Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate at the Center for Ethnography and Cultural Analysis at California State University, Fullerton. She studies the social life of data analytics, including how health practitioners, scientists, policymakers, and lay people work with large-scale data systems in everyday society. Her main research examines the rapid circulation of biomedical data and its consequences for science, governance, and care. She is also currently studying organized resistance to automated technologies and community perceptions of COVID-19 pandemic response. Her work is featured in Social Science & Medicine, Information, Communication & Society, and Big Data & Society; from a previous research life, she has also published on HIV/AIDS, stigma, and access to care. For more information, visit her website at www.taylormcruz.com. |
|
Yvette P. Cuca, PhD, MPH, MIAPhD Sociology, 2013 Keywords: Women, HIV, stigma, trauma, research Yvette Cuca is Research Specialist at the UCSF School of Nursing and the UCSF Women’s HIV Program. Her research has focused on childbearing decision-making for women living with HIV/AIDS, with a particular focus on the role of social stigma. She is currently collaborating with the UCSF Women’s HIV Program to implement and evaluate a new model of trauma-informed primary care that acknowledges and addresses the impact of current and lifelong trauma (abuse, neglect, structural violence) on the lives and health of women living with HIV. This collaborative study will examine the impact of trauma-informed primary care on physical and mental health outcomes, and on outcomes related to social support, empowerment, and coping mechanisms, among others. |
|
Richard Culbertson, PhDPhD Sociology , 1993 Richard Culbertson is Interim Dean of the School of Public Health at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. He holds a Master of Divinity degree cum laude from Harvard University; a Master of Health Administration from the University of Minnesota; and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Sociology from the University of California-San Francisco. He has served as the Director of the Master of Health Administration program at Indiana University-Indianapolis; Associate Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences and Associate Dean of the Medical School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Founding Director of Administration and Finance for the University of California-San Francisco Medical Group; and CEO of the Kaiser-Permanente Sunset Medical Center, Los Angeles, as well as COO and other administrative positions for several major teaching hospitals. |
|
Carrie L. Graham, PhDPhD Sociology, 2002 Director of Long Term Services and Supports, Center for Health Care Strategies (LTSS and Integrated Care team) Carrie Graham, PhD is the director of long-term services and supports at the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS). In this role, she oversees CHCS’ portfolio of work to improve care delivery for older adults and people with disability who need long-term services and supports (LTSS). Dr. Graham has been working in the field of aging research, health policy, and evaluation research for over 20 years. Prior to CHCS, she was the principal investigator of several studies examining how different aspects of health reform in California have impacted health care and LTSS for seniors and people with disabilities. Most recently, she led a multi-institution evaluation of California’s efforts to integrate care for dually eligible beneficiaries in managed care delivery systems. She also evaluated consumer-directed organizations that work to promote aging in communities. Dr. Graham specializes in using a participatory evaluation approach that incorporates the perspectives of consumers and stakeholders in all phases of evaluation — from the evaluation design through the interpretation of results. She conducts research with hard-to-reach populations including frail seniors, people with disabilities, people with chronic illnesses, and people with no or limited English proficiency. She was the co-investigator on a National Institute of Aging-funded study of seniors living alone with dementia. To answer complex policy questions, she often uses mixed methods that incorporate both qualitative (interviews/focus groups) and quantitative (surveys/claims/encounter) data. She currently holds an appointment as Full Professor, Adjunct at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Institute for Health and Aging. In 2018, she spent the year in Washington DC as a health and aging policy fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Health Subcommittee. In this role, she worked on Medicare policy including prescription drug pricing, skilled nursing facilities, post-acute care, surprise billing, and LTSS. After returning to California in 2019, she was appointed as senior policy advisor to Governor Newsom’s Master Plan for Aging. Dr. Graham holds a doctorate in medical sociology from UCSF and a master’s degree in gerontological studies from the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from University of California, San Diego in sociology and African studies. |
|
Christoph Hanssmann, PhDPhD Sociology, 2017
Hanssmann’s interdisciplinary research spans feminist and trans studies; science and technology, studies; and social sciences of health and medicine. His work centers on how relationships between biomedicine and social movements shape the politics of health and science. He works with researchers and activists in feminist, queer, and transfeminist health and justice, and recently completed a manuscript about the transnational emergence of transgender health as an institutionalizing field and public good. In it, he chronicles how certain strands of trans health activism in the U.S. and Argentina have confronted not only regimes of pathologization, but also austerity politics more broadly. Hanssmann has a Ph.D. in sociology from UCSF and an MPH from the University of Washington. He has published individually and collectively in Transgender Studies Quarterly, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Feminist Formations, and Social Science and Medicine. Chris is part of the Feminist Health Justice Collective, the Star Fem Co*Lab, and the Just Research? collaborative. |
|
Jessica Harrison, PhD, LCSWPhD Sociology 2023 Keywords: reproductive health; perinatal healthcare; sociology of gender; structural competency; health professions Dr. Harrison is continuing to pursue her research as a T32 post-doctoral scholar at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at UCSF, and she maintains a small independent therapy practice in Portland, Ore. In addition to providing mental healthcare, she is committed to contributing research for the improvement of social and structural conditions that impact the health and well-being of pregnant and postpartum people and their families. Website: jessicamharrison.com |
|
Amy Houtrow, MD, PHD, MPHPhD Sociology 2012 Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation School of Medicine Professor, Vice-Chair for Quality, Endowed Chair and Associate Program Director
|
|
Natalie Ingraham, PhD, MPHPhD Sociology, 2016 Key words: medical sociology, body size, gender, LGBTQ studies, health disparities Natalie Ingraham, PhD, MPH (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, East Bay. She earned her PhD in Sociology from UC San Francisco and her master’s in public health from Indiana University. Her research examines the intersections of body size, gender, sexuality and health. Prior to her position at CSU East Bay, she conducted qualitative research on gender and reproductive health as a staff research associate at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at UCSF and in the Dept. of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley. |
|
Melanie Jeske, PhDPhD Sociology, 2022 Keywords: science and technology studies, novel biomedical technologies, inequality, illness experience, scientific labor Melanie Jeske, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at University of Chicago. Situated at the intersection of sociology of medicine and science and technology studies, Jeske’s research explores social, political and ethical dimensions of knowledge systems, emergent biotechnologies, and expertise. Her work across these areas has been published in journals including Science, Technology, & Human Values, Social Science & Medicine, BioSocieties, PLOS ONE, and Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. More information about her current and past projects can be found at www.meljeske.com |
|
Erin Johnson, PhDPhd Sociology, 2024 Erin Johnson, PhD, MPH (she/her/hers) is a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she contributes to the Abortion Attitudes Project Team (https://damss.publichealth.indiana.edu/). Her current research uses abortion funds as a lens to understand the role of care work in social movements. More broadly, her work seeks to understand how our social construction of the “female” body as fertile and the valorization of motherhood as the ultimate feminine virtue affects health policy, medical practice, and personal experiences regarding menstruation, contraception, and abortion. Dr. Johnson is particularly interested in the ways socio-political systems punish individuals assigned female at birth who reject (or even appear to reject) motherhood, how they prioritize the health of potential future children over the health of patients capable of becoming pregnant, and how individuals and communities organize to resist or reinforce these oppressive systems. Website: erinrjohnson.com Twitter:https://twitter.com/erinrjohnson3
|
|
Carolyn D. Keagy, PhDPhD Sociology, 2015 Carolyn D. Keagy is a senior data analyst at Kaiser Permanente focusing on survival analysis and advanced quantitative methods with SAS and Teradata. She started her academic career with concurrently awarded bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago with general honors. Her PhD in Sociology was awarded by the University of California San Francisco from the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Her research interests are high risk behaviors, trauma, body modification, coping, mixed methods, socio-economic differences in health care delivery, and patient reported outcome |
|
Rashon I. Lane, PhD, MAPhD Sociology, 2021 I currently serve as a Senior Health Equity Scientist to develop cardiovascular and mental research that integrates medical sociology and Black feminist theories in health care systems at Sutter Health. I lead efforts to center historically marginalized communities in all phases of the research process. |
|
Lora Bex Lempert, PhDPhD Sociology, 1993
|
|
Roberta G Lessor, PhDPhD Sociology, 1982 My doctoral training at UCSF, beyond my master's level education in nursing and sociology at UCLA, enabled me to assume many medical sociology education and health science leadership roles during my 34-year career at Chapman University, from tenured Assistant Professor to Professor Emeritus. I served as dean of the liberal arts college for seven years, and on stepping down as dean, took a joint appointment as a founding faculty member of the Crean College of Health Sciences at Chapman. For many years, I held a volunteer clinical faculty position in the School of Medicine at UCI in the Department of Internal Medicine and Primary Care. I was a founding member of the Orange County Women's Health Project and I also continue to serve on the foundation board of Share Our Selves, which operates seven Federally Qualified Health Centers and the longest-running social services organization in Orange County. |
|
Karen C. Lloyd, PhDPhD Sociology, 2016 Keywords: HIV biomedical prevention; biomedicalization, risk and surveillance; sociology of pharmaceuticals; pregnancy and birth; qualitative research methodologies (grounded theory, situational analysis and narrative methods) Karen C. Lloyd is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Population Research in Sexual Health and HIV, part of the Institute for Global Health, University College London. Her current research involves an exploration of patient and provider experiences of using digital technologies for both HIV testing and the management of HIV treatment and care. Her broader research interests include HIV bio- and digital technologies, including the use of pharmaceuticals for prevention, biomedicalization, including the biomedicalization of HIV prevention, and qualitative research methods and ethics. Her dissertation, "Vital Politics and Anticipatory Practice of HIV Treatment as Prevention: The Discursive Work of the Biomedicalization of HIV Prevention," was a multi-sited qualitative analysis of the emergence and travels of the professional discourses of HIV treatment as prevention. She received her B.A. in Sociology at the University of Delaware (2003) and a Master of Arts from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University (2007). Website: http://www.karenclloyd.com |
|
Laura Mamo, PhDPhD Sociology, 2002 Laura Mamo is the Health Equity Institute Professor of Public Health. Her work lies at the intersection of medical sociology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies of science, technology and medicine. Her research and teaching focus on sexuality and its politics in medicine, science, and health discourse, practice, and resistance. Mamo is the author of the forthcoming book, Sexualizing Cancer: HPV and the Gendered Politics of Cancer Prevention (University of Chicago Press, 2023); Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience (Duke University Press, 2007); co-author of Living Green: Communities that Sustain (New Society Press, 2010); and co-editor of Biomedicalization Studies: Technoscience and Transformations of Health, Illness and U.S. Biomedicine (Duke University Press, 2010). Mamo is the co-founder of The Beyond Bullying Project, a multimedia school-based queer sexuality and gender project with Jessica Fields, Jen Gilbert and Nancy Lesko. Mamo’s research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and others. Mamo earned her PhD in 2002 from UCSF and BA from University of Wisconsin, Madison. She joined the faculty at SFSU as Health Equity Professor of Public Health in 2010 following appointments as Assistant Professor and Associated Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. |
|
Lisa Jean Moore, PhD, MPHPhD Sociology, 1995 Key Words: Feminist Science Studies, Qualitative Research, Animal Studies, Critical Body Studies, Prison Education |
|
Jennifer Nazareno, PhDPhD Sociology, 2015 UCSF Medical Sociology Department and the wonderful, esteemed faculty provided me with the the foundation and necessary critical analytical skills to advocate for the health and well-being of vulnerable populations through my writing, teaching and leadership roles. |
|
Tania Pacheco-Werner, PhDPhD Sociology, 2014 Dr. Tania Pacheco-Werner is Co-Director at the Central Valley Health Policy Institute at Fresno State. Dr. Pacheco-Werner is also a member of the California Air Resources Board in December and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. Her work focuses on the social determinants of health. She has academic and policy publications on the relationship between air quality, racial segregation, maternal health among vulnerable populations, and policies related to housing and health services. She is an expert in community engagement for policy efforts, most recently involved in the Fresno economic equity initiative DRIVE (Developing the Region’s Inclusive and Vibrant Economy). She is the co-creator of the COVID-19 Equity Project in Fresno County, which uses the community health worker model in the response to the pandemic. The curriculum for this model has been adapted in other counties. E-mail: [email protected] |
|
Brittney Pond, PhDPhD Sociology, 2024 Dr. Pond recently graduated with a Sociology PhD in 2024 in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) where she currently works as a Research Assistant in the Institute for Health and Aging (IHA). Currently, she is the Assistant Editor of the Journal of Aging Studies and a Co-Director of the UCSF Emancipatory Sciences Lab. Her research centers on intersections of aging and health equity, specifically regarding mechanisms of support for direct care workers and older adults. I use both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the ways in which systems of oppression shape work and aging in the U.S.
|
|
Florencia Rojo, PhDPhD Sociology, 2019 Florencia Rojo is Assistant Professor at Colorado College in the Department of Sociology. She conducts qualitative research on trauma, violence, and migration with Latin American immigrant communities. Her dissertation, “‘You wanted norte’: Central American Families and the Ongoing Trauma of Migration, Separation, and Deportation” examines the intersections of multiple, ongoing traumas in immigrants’ lives across time and space. Her teaching approach bridges scholarship and social justice work, through courses including: community-based research, violence, immigration, and urban sociology. She also holds a BA in Sociology from DePaul University. |
|
Oliver Rollins, PhDPhD Sociology 2014 Oliver Rollins is the Old Dominion Career Development Professor and Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. He explores how systemic practices of social difference and inequity influence and are affected by the making and use of neuroscience. Professor Rollins's book, Conviction: The Making and Unmaking of The Violent Brain (Stanford University Press, 2021), traces the evolution of neuroimaging research on antisocial behavior, emphasizing this controversial brain model’s limitation to address aspects of social inequality that actively shape our interactions with institutions of criminal justice and mental health. His current research focuses on 1) the legacies of scientific racism in the mind and brain sciences, 2) social justice-based policy and research potentials for neuroscience, and 3) the relationships between neuroethics and data governance. |
|
Dale A. Rose, PhD, MScPhD Sociology 2007 Dale Rose is Deputy Director of the Division of Bacterial Diseases in the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. In this role, he helps provide strategic direction and management to an organization of over 180 epidemiologists, laboratorians, data managers, public health analysts, and operations and support staff on public health issues - domestic and global - related to vaccine-preventable and other bacterial respiratory diseases. Although he did not pursue an academic career, Dale's training at UCSF in the field of medical sociology has informed his public health work during the entirety of his career. His main intellectual pursuits while at UCSF focused on science and technology studies, and Foucault-related lines of inquiry and method. His dissertation focused principally on how risk was conceptualized to inform vaccine policy recommendations for smallpox vaccine in 2002-2003 by looking at practices and discourse of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (a CDC advisory body). In 2009, Dale took a position at CDC to focus on public health emergency preparedness; he stayed in the preparedness field for the next 12 years, taking on jobs with increasing responsibility focused on both programmatic (e.g., supporting health departments) and scientific roles. He has also served in leadership roles in several high visibility agency emergency responses, including Ebola, Zika, hurricane Maria, and COVID-19. Dale has co-authored over 50 articles and small number of book chapters, principally on topics related to epidemiologic surveillance, public health practice, and public health preparedness and response. He attributes much of the positive trajectory of his CDC career to date to his experiences at UCSF and thinks back fondly upon his time there! |
|
Marsha Rosenbaum, PhDPhD Sociology 1979 As Principal Investigator, I used grounded theory to complete 10 qualitative studies of a variety of (illegal) drugs, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse |
|
Janet K. Shim, PhDPhD Sociology, 2002 I am deeply involved in teaching and mentoring in sociology, the sociology of health and illness, health inequalities, and qualitative methods. My program of research focuses on two main areas: First, I have integrated my interests in the social determinants of health and the social production of knowledge to define an ongoing line of research that examines the science of health disparities as it has evolved in the US. A second area of research is the study of health care interactions and their consequences for patient and provider decision making. |
|
Krista Sigurdson, PhDPhD Sociology, 2015 Keywords: disparities in neonatal care; infant and maternal health; infant feeding; human milk; gender and race Krista Sigurdson is a sessional instructor at The University of British Columbia in the School of Journalism, Writing and Media. She currently teaches undergraduate research and writing on the theme of Scientific Racism and Sexism. Krista was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine at Stanford where she worked on qualitative research on racial and ethnic disparities in neonatal care. Her qualitative multi-sited dissertation research on human milk exchange was co-chaired by Dr. Adele Clarke and Dr. Janet Shim and was awarded the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in STS, the Canadian Social Science Research Council Doctoral Fellowship and the UCSF Distinguished Dissertation Award in Sociology. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krista-sigurdson-93049928/ |
|
Jennifer Singh, PhDPhD Sociology 2010 Jennifer S. Singh is Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Institute of Technology. She has a PhD in sociology from the University of California, San Francisco and specializes in medical sociology and science and technology studies. She is an expert in qualitative research, conducting and analyzing over 200 interviews and focus groups on the social and scientific impacts of autism. Her book, Multiple Autisms: Spectrums of Advocacy and Genomic Science, is an ethnography that explores a range of perspectives from scientists, activists, parents, and people living with autism surrounding the rise and implementation of autism genetics research. Her current research examines the intersectional inequities to autism services and diagnosis among low-income Black communities, including the impact of COVID-19 during the height of racial tensions in the summer of 2020. |
|
Ariana Thompson-Lastad, PhDPhD Sociology, 2018 Ariana Thompson-Lastad, PhD is an Assistant Professor at UCSF in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and Osher Center for Integrative Health. She conducts qualitative and community-engaged research focused on the role of integrative healthcare in advancing health equity. Trained as a medical sociologist, she uses qualitative and community-engaged research to understand the implementation and outcomes of group medical visits and other innovative models of care. Dr. Thompson-Lastad is also a board member of Integrative Medicine for the Underserved and a leadership team member of the Structural Competency Working Group. She received a BA in sociology and human rights from Bard College. Ariana is especially enthusiastic about supporting sociologists interested in integrative healthcare, and parenting during graduate school. |
|
Cathy J. Tashiro, PhDPhD Sociology, 1998 Incorporated sociological principles in the teaching of health equity, community and population health, minority health and aging to undergraduate and graduate nurses, and in my research on mixed race, public housing redevelopment, and community health workers. Theoretical perspectives from my sociological training are woven throughout my journal articles, book chapters, and book. |
|
Meredith Van Natta, PhDPhD Sociology, 2019 Meredith Van Natta is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced. Meredith’s research focuses on the intersection of health, citizenship, and science, medicine, and technology studies. Her current book project examines how uncertainty around contemporary immigration policies shapes the health care of noncitizens in the U.S. Her ethnographic and interview data reveal how anti-immigrant administrations at federal and state levels have leveraged policy uncertainty to discipline both immigrant patients and the institutions that serve them in a process she refers to as “medical legal violence”. Meredith also studies the expanding use of biometrics in immigration contexts and structural health inequities in the U.S. |
|
Lilian Walkover, PhDPhD Sociology, 2018 Keywords: Critical global health studies; Science and technology studies; Sociology of health and illness; Sociology of knowledge; Qualitative social science methods Lillian Walkover is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of California, San Diego, jointly appointed in the Department of Communication and Global Health Program. Before joining UCSD, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Health in the Department of Sociology at Drexel University. Her postdoctoral research with Dr. Susan Bell is a study of the experiences and career paths of physicians who enter the US as refugees. A sociologist of global health with an interdisciplinary orientation, she has experience conducting qualitative global health research in the US and abroad. She focuses on the production, valuation, and movement of health knowledges, both globally and in the US. Her doctoral work focused on how health knowledges are produced and travel through an analysis of the translation and adaptation of Where There Is No Doctor, the most widely used health manual in the world. This project explored translations and adaptations in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, and English for use in India, and the analysis sits at the intersection of sociology of health and illness, critical global health, and postcolonial science and technology studies. In addition, she works with the Structural Competency Working Group to use structural competency and other social science frameworks for health professions education. (updated September 2020)
|
|
Rebecca Wolfe, PhDPhD Sociology, 2024 Keywords: qualitative methods, disordered eating, mental health, sexuality, gender Rebecca is a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Kennedy School, working with the Shift Project to examine experiences and outcomes of work and health for people working in the retail and food service sectors. A sociologist with expertise in qualitative methods, gender, mental health, and body and embodiment, Rebecca’s ongoing work focuses on embodied experiences of mental health, particularly disordered eating and sexual dysfunction. Website: https://www.rebeccawolfe.phd/ |
|
Jarmin Yeh, PhDPhD Sociology, 2019 Jarmin Yeh is an assistant adjunct professor at the Institute for Health & Aging and teaches in the Master of Science in Healthcare Administration and Interprofessional Leadership (MS-HAIL) program at UCSF. Jarmin’s research focuses on aging, health, and social inequalities. They have been examining age-friendly community initiatives and the lived experiences of older adults to help improve their quality of life. They are part of a research team that evaluates federally and locally funded projects to improve caregiver training and systems of care for people living with dementia. They are also part of a research team, studying the effectiveness of a standardized assessment tool implemented with Adult Protective Services (APS). Jarmin is a board member of the Metta Fund, Community Living Campaign, and Head Over Heels Athletic Arts. She holds a BA in social welfare from UC-Berkeley and MSSW/MPH from Columbia University.
|
If you are an alumni of the UCSF Sociology Doctoral program, we would love to feature your profile on this page!
Please send an email to [email protected] that includes:
- a short biography - highlighting how you have used the training you have received at UCSF since you graduated
- a high-quality profile picture – at least 200px wide
- 5 keywords reflecting your research interests
- optional additions: website or other contact information to post publicly.