Inequality and moral meaning-making in the admissions consulting profession Abstract. Prior research has described how middle-class and affluent families draw on private supplemental educational resources to help their children mai

New in @socprobsjournal.bsky.social w/ @estelabdiaz.bsky.social: the rapid growth of the admissions consulting industry has raised questions about inequality, privilege, and merit. We combine two original data sources to ask how consultants make sense of their work.
academic.oup.com/socpro/advan...

Some exciting developments with @ffcws.bsky.social at Notre Dame! Stay tuned for postdoc announcements and conference convenings!

You have one month left to apply to this! Applications will be reviewed beginning September 22nd, 2025.

Competence over Partisanship: Party Affiliation Does Not Affect the Selection of School District Superintendents - Greer Mellon, 2025 In recent decades, affective polarization and partisan animosity have risen sharply in the United States. To what extent have these trends affected hiring decis...

Great to see @greermellon.bsky.social with the lead article in the latest ASR. And there’s good news: even in polarized times, school boards are selecting superintendents based on perceived competence and interpersonal skills, not party affiliation. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Trump evicts homeless people Podcast Episode · Today, Explained · 08/21/2025 · 27m

Today I fulfilled my millennial dream and appeared on @vox's Today, Explained podcast, talking about Trump's executive order around homelessness and civil commitments. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Erin McDonnell's (@profmcdonnell.bsky.social) amazing new paper "Bureaucracy in Action: The Sociology of Public Administration" is online now at the Annual Review of Sociology. Check it out!!! @ndsociology.bsky.social @artslettersnd.bsky.social @asanews.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Endowed Chair in Demography at the rank of Full Professor at Notre Dame Population Analytics is now open for applications. I highly encourage established faculty with a strong research program and entrepreneurial spirit to apply! @ndsociology.bsky.social

apply.interfolio.com/171683

Title and abstract of the paper.

Now out in Social Networks

Network analysis aspires to be “anticategorical,” yet its basic units—relationships—are usually readily categorized ('friendship,' 'love'). Thus, a nontrivial cultural typification is asserted in the very building blocks of most network analyses.

doi.org/10.1016/j.so...

A screenshot of the Sociological Methods & Research website showing the special issue title

I’m delighted to share that the August 2025 special issue of Sociological Methods & Research on Generative AI is out now. Along with my co-editor, Daniel Karell, we put together this issue to build on the conference we organized last year.

Here's a thread on each of the ten papers:

Limits to helping in a helping profession: the social context of psychiatrist opt-out from public insurance Abstract. In the United States, most mental health services are provided by independent helping professionals, individually deciding where to operate, whom

The policy takeaway? Beyond raising public insurance reimbursement, we need geographically-sensitive interventions that account for the way places shape the balance between economic pressures and social responsibility. Read here: academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a... or DM if blocked by paywall

In the end, the same psychiatrist will likely make different choices on public insurance participation or opt-out depending on the social environment where they are embedded. These local structures modulate individual decision-making above and beyond individual values 👇

In places with multiple psychiatrists (i.e., not monopolies), they tend to coordinate rather than compete. This type of market segmentation means that every location studied had at least some public insurance access, making coverage wide (if very thin) 👇

Psychiatrists respond to patient needs—but more strongly when the economic incentives align. In areas with more Medicaid pts., psychiatrists are likelier to accept Medicaid. This is not true for Medicare, where pts. (older, but many not necessarily poor) can more often afford to pay for care 👇

I analyzed data about all Georgia psychiatrists & ran a "secret shopper" audit to see how social geography shapes tensions between markets and morals. In rural areas, the same conditions that concentrate responsibility also create market monopolies—pulling psychiatrists in polar directions 👇

Georgia ranks dead last in mental health affordability. Almost 50% of psychiatrists opt out of Medicaid/Medicare. How do psychiatrists navigate the tension between helping those in need and the economic incentives of a privatized healthcare system? My new Social Forces paper examines this 🧵👇

✨New✨ postdoc opportunity to collaborate with @mollycopeland.bsky.social and myself on an exciting project on geography, community, and mental health at @ndsociology.bsky.social. Happy to talk to anyone interested. Please resky (or whatever retweeting is called here)!
apply.interfolio.com/169206