Listed in reverse chronological order
Dr. Leah Gose
Dr. Leah E. Gose was ERI’s Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change Postdoctoral Scholar for the 2023 – 2024 academic year. She completed her PhD in sociology at Harvard University in 2023. Her primary research interests center on the role of community organizations as vital aspects of the social safety net, in how they shape access to resources for individuals, opportunities to build social networks and promote civic engagement, and respond to governmental policy and funding influences. Dr. Gose’ scholarship contributes primarily to the study of organizations and inequality/poverty, but also engages with urban sociology, political sociology, social policy, and social networks.
At USC, Dr. Gose expanded her dissertation work to explore organizational-level service provision in Los Angeles and through a larger survey project to be disseminated across the United States. From 2024 to 2026 she will be a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California in the Department of Sociology, after which she will transition into an assistant professor position in the same department.
Research topics: Inequality, Organizations, Social Policy, Urban Sociology, Welfare Reform, Mixed Methods, Grants Reviewing, Organizational Program Evaluation
Dr. Sean Angst
Dr. Sean Angst (he/him) earned a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management from the University of Southern California. His research focuses on housing, community development, and racial justice. Dr. Angst recently completed his dissertation on housing affordability and neighborhood change in South Los Angeles, which examined the impacts of those processes on survival and stress. During his time at USC, Sean also served on the school’s Teaching Excellence Committee and as an organizer among graduate student workers. In these roles, he fought for policies that prioritize student voice, belonging, and accountability.
Dr. Bita Minaravesh
Dr. Bita Minaravesh (she/her) is a Lecturer in the Spatial Sciences Institute in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California (USC). In her post-doctoral research, she is exploring the state of environmental and economic equity across California through a lens of intersectionality to promote every child’s opportunity to realize their universal right to self-determination. She employs a spatial perspective to expose the inequitable factors influencing both a child’s trajectory in the short term and a community’s opportunity for growth over generations.
Dr. Thai V. Le
Dr. Thai V. Le (he/him) earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, where his research focused on issues of social equity. His dissertation examines the diverging pathways to citizenship and immigrant integration in the United States and extrapolates the multiplicative effects of racialized and gendered barriers within immigrant communities. As a mixed-methods researcher, Dr. Le utilizes statistical models, ethnographic practices, and spatial tools to study a range of issues, including naturalization outcomes, regressive and discriminatory local financing practices, the digital divide, emotional justice, and burnout among public sector workers. In uplifting social equity and intersectionality, his research also disaggregates data to elevate the narratives of marginalized and minoritized communities. Dr. Le’s postdoctoral work takes a mixed-methods approach in exploring the immigrant integration landscape in California to identify strategies in mobilizing and organizing hard-to-reach immigrant populations.
In addition to producing research that contributes to positive social change, Dr. Le’s primary goal as an activist and scholar is to teach students foundational skills that will prepare them to advocate for a just society centering equity.
Dr. Le is originally from Mississippi but was raised in Southern California where he also earned his undergraduate degree from UCLA in International Development Studies, Asian American Studies, and Political Science. After UCLA, Dr. Le lived abroad for several years as an English Teacher, Peace Corps Volunteer, and youth development organizer. Dr. Le’s passions in life beyond his advocacy work include traveling and eating noodles.
Dr. Deisy Del Real
Dr. Deisy Del Real’s completed her Ph.D. at UCLA. Her dissertation work focuses on Documenting the Undocumented, addressing the relationship between regional and national government policies, and uncovered the factors and power dynamics that shaped the South American states’ ratification and implementation of the Mercosur Residency Agreements (2002). These agreements were the first immigration policies to make legal status a substantive right, requiring states to provide undocumented immigrants with legal residency. You can learn more about her work here. Dr. Del Real’s postdoctoral work will analyze how immigrants are affected by the uneven implementation of the Residency Agreements in South America. Venezuelan immigration to other South American countries has increased by 900% in the last three years and most are moving to Argentina, Chile, and Columbia.
Dr. Nicole Arlette Hirsch
Dr. Nicole Arlette Hirsch received her B.A. in sociology from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. Her dissertation was entitled: Advocacy and Anti-Racism: How Institutions Shape Organizational Responses to Racially Biased Policing in France and the United States. Her research interests include race relations, social change, organizations, and comparative research. Broadly, her work considers how individuals, groups, and organizations confront stigmatization, discrimination, and racism in the United States and Europe.
Prior to joining the department of sociology at the University of Southern California as a Turpanjian Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Hirsch held the Gerardo Marín Predoctoral Fellowship at the University of San Francisco where she taught “Race and Resistance” and “African American Culture and Society” in the sociology department. Dr. Hirsch’s research has been supported by the Chateaubriand Fellowship offered by the French Embassy, the Harvard University Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies’ dissertation research fellowship, and several grants from the Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives program. Dr. Hirsch has been a visiting scholar at the National Institute for Demographic Research in Paris, France and an exchange scholar at U.C. Berkeley. Some of her recent articles can be found here.
Dr. Hajar Yazdiha
Hajar Yazdiha received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research examines the mechanisms underlying the racialized politics of inclusion and exclusion. This work intersects subfields of race and ethnicity, immigration, social movements, culture, and law using mixed methods including interview, survey, historical, and computational text analysis. This research takes shape through three interrelated streams of inquiry: the first explores how intergroup boundaries and ethno-racial identities are constituted through macro-structures like laws, policies, and media. A second strand examines the consequences of these ethno-racial projects for collective behavior, collective action, and immigrant incorporation. A third strand examines how these ethno-racial projects get embodied and shape mental and physical health. This body of research works to trace how systems of inequality are reproduced and examine how everyday actors develop strategies to resist, contest, and create social change. Learn more about Hajar here.