Sofia Butnaru is a sociology Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. Her research interests lie in economic sociology, the sociology of race and gender, and urban sociology, and she examines the social structures of predatory finance with particular attention to debt. Focusing specifically on consumer debt (credit card, student, medical, and rental debt), she explores the central role indebtedness plays in daily life, while also tracing the emergence of an ever-growing and profitable global debt collection industry. Her research aims to both examine and historicize debt as a tool of economic racism and redlining and seeks to understand the effects of indebtedness on Black and brown neighborhoods. Prior to coming to the University of Chicago, she worked at New Economy Project in New York City. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago.

Andrew is a doctoral student in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. Their research focuses on racialization, urban development, and education reform. Andrew’s dissertation examines contestation surrounding a proposal for a new high school to better understand how district commitments to racial equity and community engagement shape processes of collaboration and conflict with community organizations and outcomes regarding education resource distribution. Previously, Andrew worked in the Los Angeles Unified School District as a high school math and engineering teacher, an intervention coordinator, and an instructional coach. They also supported student and union organizing to address social justice issues. Andrew holds a B.S. in Systems Science and Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis and received an M.A. in Education from Claremont Graduate University with the support of a fellowship from Math for America Los Angeles. 

Alex Koenig is a doctoral student in the Department of Comparative Human Development (CHD). His research interests broadly include social and racial inequality in education, migrant and newcomer integration into schools, and the influence of participatory decision-making frameworks on public institutions. Alex uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the ways in which institutions constrain or expand opportunities for young people at key moments of their emotional, social, and intellectual development. He is particularly interested in the ways in which borders and how communities define the collective ‘we’ influence school policies. Before UChicago, Alex served as an educator and school administrator in Boston, Massachusetts and Tulsa, Oklahoma. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies from Harvard University. 

Sasha Petrov is a doctoral candidate in economics at the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics. He studies the design of administrative partitions of space, which, for example, include regions of countries or districts of metropolitan areas. Using trade and political economy theories together with modern optimization techniques, he seeks to characterize border configurations that maximize total gains from trade given contextual political constraints. He is also working on an empirical project about administrative border design in historical Russian Imperial colonies, applying insights from his theoretical work. Sasha holds a BA in Economics and an MA in Institutional Economics from Lomonosov Moscow State University, and an MA in Economics from New Economic School in Moscow, Russia. 

Yunuen Rodriguez Rodriguez is a doctoral student at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, & Practice. Her research seeks to better understand immigrant integration and the structural factors that shape these processes. Her prior work has analyzed how those under DACA learn to be “legal” after living in the US as undocumented for decades. She is currently conducting research on the factors that contribute to young immigrants emigrating from the US in favor of other countries. Yunuen earned a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Beloit College and both an AM in Sociology and an AM in Clinical Social Work from The University of Chicago. Prior to graduate school, she worked to reunify unaccompanied minors with their families in the US. Her professional experience also includes providing consulting services to ensure implementation of sound organizational policies that tend to the needs of unaccompanied children and the staff who care for them.

Resha T. Swanson is a doctoral student in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. Utilizing mixed methods, her research centers on job quality in low-wage industries, the intersection of labor policy and racial capitalism in the U.S. South, and the infrapolitics of Black and Latinx workers. She is proud to merge her experiences as an organizer, low-wage worker, and Black woman in her research. Resha received a Master of Science in Social Work with a concentration in Policy Practice from Columbia University and her Bachelor of Social Work and Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from The University of Alabama. She spent 3 years working in an immigrant- and worker-led nonprofits prior to graduate school. 

Andrew Swift is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology. His work draws on economic, organizational, and urban sociology to study how states interpret and manage ‘natural disasters.’ In his dissertation he focuses on the case of Florida, examining how property insurers, state regulators, and emergency managers have responded to rising hurricane losses since the “wake-up call” of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Prior to graduate school, he worked at the Red Cross, and he holds a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from the University of Oregon. 

Kelly Wagman is a Computer Science PhD student at the University of Chicago specializing in human-computer interaction. Her research focuses on designing inclusive and equitable sociotechnical systems. She currently collaborates with Argonne National Lab’s CROCUS initiative, exploring community involvement in artificial intelligence development for urban climate modeling. Kelly is the recipient of a UChicago Neubauer Family Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship and holds an MS in Comparative Media Studies from MIT as well as a dual BA in Computer Science and Economics from Brown University. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked as a Research Assistant at Microsoft Research and held software engineering positions at Microsoft and Facebook.