UMass Boston

Scholarship and Research

Full-time Sociology faculty members have earned doctorates from major universities and are active researchers in their fields of study. Our lecturers are active in urban affairs, clinical settings, criminal justice administration, and many conduct research as well. Click below to learn more.

 

Faculty Research Specializations

Globalization, Immigration and Migration:
Capetillo, Montalva Barba, Okigbo, Solari

Criminology, Law and Punishment: 
Brown, Contreras, Gascón, Leverentz, Nevin, Zaykowski

Race/Ethnicity and Urban/Community: 
Contreras, Gascón, Okigbo

Critical Race Theory: 
Montalva Barba

Gender: 
Montalva Barba, Okigbo, Solari
Bobel

Culture, Group Processes, and Identity:  
Capetillo, Okigbo, Rodriquez, Solari, Stewart, Youngreen

Mental Health, Health and Aging:  
Contreras, Rodriquez
Burr, Mutchler, Stokes, Sprague

Political Sociology and Public Policy: 
Brown, Stewart
Kallman, MacIndoe, Warren

Research Methods:  

Recent Publications

Brown, Elizabeth K., & Silver, J. R. The moral foundations of crime control in American presidential platforms, 1968-2016. Punishment & Society, 24(2), 169-220. 2022.

Wozniak, Kevin H., Pickett, J.T., and Brown, Elizabeth K. Judging hardworking robbers and lazy thieves: An experimental test of act- vs. person-centered punitiveness and perceived redeemability. Justice Quarterly. 2022.

Pontell, Henry N., Jianhong Liu, Contreras, Christopher, Soi Wan (Donna) Leong, and Li Huang “Occupational Crimes in Casinos: Employee Theft in Macau, China.” Crime, Law and Social Change. 2022.

Montalva Barba, Miguel. 2023. To move forward, we must look back: White supremacy at the base of urban studies. Urban Studies, 60(5), 791-810.

Nevin, Andrew D., Yimin Chen, Anabel Quan-Haase, and Shuzhe Yang. “Key Considerations in the Interpretation of Digital Trace Data.” In Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (2nd ed). London, UK: Sage.  2022.

Okigbo, Karen Amaka. 2023. "Nigerian Intermarriage: Making Black Diversity Visible." Contexts, 22(1):60-62.

Rodriquez, Jason, Anmol Gupta, Staci Ballard, and Gary Siperstein. “Positive Identity Development through Community Engagement Among Emergent Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.” Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities. 2023.

Siperstein, Gary N., Staci C. Ballard, Holly E. Jacobs, Jason Rodriquez, and Timothy P. Shriver. “’A Place for Everybody’: Students’ Perspectives on Inclusive Behavior in School.” Educational Researcher. 2022.

Rodriquez, Jason, Anika Lanser, Holly E. Jacobs, Ashlyn Smith, Sharbari Ganguly. “When the Normative is Formative: Parents’ Perceptions of the Impacts of Inclusive Sports Programs.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 19 (17):10889. 2022.

Rodriquez, Jason.  “Reconfiguring the social organization of work in the intensive care unit: Changed relationships and new roles during COVID-19. Social Science & Medicine: 115600. 2022.

Solari, Cinzia D. “Gender, Modernity, and Russia’s War on Ukraine.” Footnotes: A Magazine of the American Sociological Association 51(1). 2023.

Radhakrishnan, Smitha and Cinzia D. Solari (equal coauthors). Forthcoming, 2023. The Gender Order of Neoliberalism. Polity Press.

Stewart, Evan. (forthcoming) "Rethinking Religion & Political Participation: The Case of Voting Among Religiously Unaffiliated Americans." Sociology of Religion.

Stewart, Evan, Penny Edgell, and Jack Delehanty. “Public Religion and Gendered Attitudes.” Social Problems. 2023.

Stewart, Evan, “Interpreting Nonreligion.” Pages 228-249 in Interpreting Religion, edited by Erin Johnston and Vikas Singh. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press. 2022.

Kucinskas, Jaime, and Stewart, Evan (Equal Authorship). “Selfish or Substituting Spirituality? Clarifying the Relationship between Spiritual Practice and Political Engagement.” American Sociological Review. 2022.

Funded Research Projects

EXTERNALLY FUNDED PROJECTS

Professor Russell Schutt: 2020–2023 Principal Investigator, Comparative Effectiveness of Cognitive Enhancement Therapy versus Social Skills Training in Serious Mental Illness. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (prime: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute), $177,707.

Professor Evan Stewart: 2021–2023 Principal Investigator, Public Religious Repertoires in the United States. Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, $29,754. This project measures how people evaluate various public religious repertoires to determine which ones currently shape U.S. civic life and politics.

INTERNALLY FUNDED PROJECTS

Professor Daniel Gascón: 2022-2023 Principal Investigator. $2,500 Labor Resource Center Faculty Research Grant. $2,000 RJC Special Mention Award.  

Professor Cinzia Solari: 2022-2023 Principal Investigator, Nonbinary and Transgender Students’ Experiences Navigating High School. $7,176 UMass Boston Healey Grant. $5,000 CLA Dean's Research Grant. The study aims to uncover school practices that support nonbinary and transgender students as well as propose new practices, derived from our data, that might increase inclusion.