Overview

My research investigates how disruptive life events—such as divorce, job loss, and large-scale crises—reshape life course inequality structured by family and gender processes.

I focus on three intersecting themes:

  1. Disruption and Stratification – I study how disruptive life events reshape life trajectories and produce stratifying consequences.

  2. Causal Machine Learning – I develop tools that use machine learning and g-methods to model life course processes.

  3. Heterogeneity Within Groups – I examine how race, gender, and other social categories are stratified by resources, institutions, and social norms.

Key Research Projects

📄 Trajectory Stratification through Market, Family, and State

  • Sole-authored.
  • Under review at American Sociological Review
  • Examines how divorce triggers divergent institutional trajectories that structure long-term inequality, advancing the theory of trajectory stratification.
  • Keywords: Disruption, Stratification, Causal Machine Learning, Heterogeneity within Groups

📄 Differential Effects of College in Reducing COVID-19 Job Loss by Race and Skin Color

  • with Jennie E. Brand.
  • Revise & Resubmit at Demography
  • Uses causal mediation analysis to examine how college completion reduces COVID-19 job loss through access to high-skilled occupations, with differential effects by race and skin tone.
  • Keywords: Disruption, Stratification, Heterogeneity within Groups, Causal Machine Learning, Mediation

📄 Swapping Gender Traditionalism in South Korea

  • Sole-authored.
  • Published in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2023
  • Reveals how horizontal and vertical gender ideologies diverge within religious groups in Korea, challenging the assumption of unified gender traditionalism.
  • Received the Student Paper Award (Honorable Mention) from the ASA Sociology of Religion Section (2025).
  • Keywords: Heterogeneity within Groups, Religion, Gender

📄 Untangling Perceptions of Atypical Parents

  • with Natasha Quadlin, Long Doan, and Brian Powell.
  • Published in Journal of Marriage and Family, 2022
  • Explores how gendered caregiving norms shape perceptions of nontraditional families through survey experiments.
  • Keywords: Heterogeneity within Groups, Experiments, Family

📄 Deep Learning–Based G‑Computation for Life Course Sociology

  • Sole-authored.
  • In progress — part of M.S. thesis in Statistics and Data Science
  • Develops a deep learning–based method to estimate causal effects in longitudinal life course models, with a plausibility check for empirical positivity violations.
  • Keywords: Causal Machine Learning

📄 Causal Machine Learning for Sociology

  • with Jennie E. Brand.
  • Revise & Resubmit at Cologne Journal of Sociology and Social Psychology
  • Introduces causal machine learning as a deductive–inductive paradigm for theory-building in sociology.
  • Keywords: Causal Machine Learning

📄 Flexibly Detecting Effect Heterogeneity

  • with Jiahui Xi, Jennie E. Brand, and Tanvi Shinkre.
  • Revise & Resubmit at Sociological Methods & Research
  • Develops a flexible causal machine learning approach to detect treatment effect heterogeneity in causal mediation analysis, with application to college and poverty.
  • Keywords: Causal Machine Learning

📄 Researcher Reasoning Meets Computational Capacity

  • with Ian Lundberg and Jennie E. Brand.
  • Published in Social Science Research, 2022
  • Demonstrates how machine learning can support social science research and offers strategies to lower barriers to its adoption, with causal inference as one illustrative application.
  • Keywords: Machine Learning

📄 Estimating Multi-Annual Excess Deaths in the U.S.

  • with Patrick Heuveline.
  • Revise & Resubmit at European Journal of Population
  • Develops a demographic formula to estimate excess deaths, accounting for changes in population exposure over time, and reveals the long-term U.S. mortality disadvantage.
  • Keywords: Disruption, Formal Demography

In Development

📝 Causal Effects of Job Loss on Gendered Household Decisions

  • Sole-authored.
  • In progress – part of Ph.D. dissertation in Sociology
  • Estimates the causal impact of job loss on gendered decisions around labor force participation and domestic responsibilities, using longitudinal data and causal methods.
  • Keywords: Disruption, Causal Machine Learning, Gender

📝 Job Loss and Divorce in the U.S.

  • Sole-authored.
  • In progress – part of Ph.D. dissertation in Sociology
  • Examines how job loss influences relationship dissolution over time using longitudinal data and causal methods.
  • Keywords: Disruption, Causal Machine Learning, Family, Social Demography

🧪 Simulating Social Role Transitions Using Generative Models

  • Sole-authored.
  • Concept-stage project
  • Explores how generative AI can simulate household decision-making under life disruptions.
  • Keywords: Disruption, Generative AI, Experiments