Faculty Research

Awards & Honors

  • Jeff Sallaz’s book, Lives on the Line (Oxford University Press), received awards from four ASA sections: the Zelizer Book Award, Economic Sociology Section (2021); Best Book Award, Global and Transnational Sociology Section (2021); Honorable Mention, Best Book Award, Labor and Labor Movements Section (2021); Honorable Mention, Weber Book Award, Organizations Occupations and Work Section (2020)
  • Dan Martinez got an Honorable Mention, 2021 Louis Wirth International Migration Best Article Award, American Sociological Association
  • Dan Martinez is a Fellow, 2020-2021 HSI Fellowship Program, University of Arizona
  • Dan Martinez participated in the “Congressional ‘Ask a Criminologist’ Series: What is the Connection between Immigration & Crime?” Congressional briefing organized by the Crime & Justice Research Alliance and the Consortium of Social Science Associations, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC.
  • Congratulations to Brian Mayer, who received the UA’s Provost Award for Innovation in Teaching! This university-wide award was established to acknowledge outstanding faculty whose teaching portfolios and instructional effectiveness merit special recognition. Brian was selected and recommended by the university committee because he developed experiential learning opportunities for undergraduates who enroll in the Poverty in Tucson Field Workshop.
  • Erin Leahey has been elected Chair of the ASA Methods section.
  • Dan Martinez has been elected to council for ASA's Crime, Law, and Deviance Section, joining Jennifer Carlson. That means that Arizona Sociology faculty constitute one-third of the section’s council!
  • In summer 2020, Professor Ronald L. Breiger received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award from the American Sociological Association Methods Section. This award recognizes a scholar who has made a career of outstanding contributions to methodology in sociology.
  • In October 2020, Internship Coordinator Jessica Dennes was one of three recipients of the national Emerging Leader Impact Award from the Association of Leaders in Volunteer Engagement.
  • Ronald L. Breiger is a Fellow (May–Sept. 2020) of the Working Group on Multimodal Rhetoric in Online Media Communication, conducted via zoom at the Bielefeld University Advanced Studies Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), in Germany. This project investigates how political subcommunities manage the creation and dissemination of alternative rhetorical discourse, including false news.
  • Ronald L. Breiger gave the keynote address at the Winter Institute in Computational Social Science (WICSS) held in Tucson (via Zoom) in January 2021. The titled of his talk was “Social Structure and Community Detection.”
  • In September 2021, Dan Martinez participated in a virtual panel titled “Biden’s Immigration Agenda: Immediate Actions Taken” at the Center for Migration Studies of New York and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. https://cmsny.org/event/biden-agenda/
  • Ronald Breiger has received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award given by the Methods Section of the ASA. The Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award recognizes a career of outstanding contributions to sociological methodology.
  • Dan Martinez and his brother, Ricardo Martinez-Schuldt, won the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences's Donald MacNamara Award this year for their Justice Quarterly article. The MacNamara Award for Outstanding Journal Publication was created by a donation to ACJS from Dr. Donal E. MacNamara, one of Academy of Criminal Justice founding scholars. The purpose of the award is to recognize outstanding scholarship published in one of the five publication venues of the Academy.
  • Brian Mayer won the Teaching Award for Undergraduate Upper-Division Teaching from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Arizona, in Spring 2020.

Funding

  • Corey Abramson’s team at UCSF and UArizona won a 5-year NIH grant to examine the connections between culture, cognition and diverse experiences of later life via a novel combination of field research and computational social science (NIA/DP1: $3,096,245). The grant supports the establishment of the “Computational Ethnography Lab” at UArizona. The lab will focus on developing and deploying cutting edge methodological techniques to address complex problems of scientific and policy importance.
  • "How we can live and conduct business while remaining safe from contagion?" This is a question that Joe Galaskiewicz, Eunsung Yoon (in concert with a team of architects and engineers), will answer with research funds from a UA RESTRUCT Seed Grant. They plan to study the influence of neighborhood establishments on the spread patterns of COVID.
  • Daniel Menchik and Franziska Frank have been accepted to the UA's CURE Training Institute, which aims to increase research experiences for first- and second-year students. The 2021 Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) involve an innovative teaching method that involves undergraduate students in hands-on collective research experiences as part of their coursework.
  • Daniel Menchik received a research grant from The University of Arizona Social & Behavioral Sciences Research Institute for his project “Automation and Expertise.”
  • Louise Roth has received a fellowship for Fall 2020 from the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona.

In The News

  • Daniel Martínez published the Binational Migration Institute's Migrant Deaths in Southern Arizona Report in April 2021. https://sbs.arizona.edu/news/uarizona-releases-report-border-crosser-deaths-southern-arizona
  • Brian Mayer and James Shockey were both featured interviews on Arizona Public Media’s “Arizona 360” the Friday, April 16th. Professor Mayer discussed his research on the pandemic and how store clerks have dealt with COVID-19 in the workplace while Professor Shockey discussed the controversy behind wearing a mask during the pandemic.
  • Internship Coordinator Jessica Dennes started a project called "Spaces to Learn" that has provided free home office items to over 100 children in low-income families who are learning from home.
  • Martínez, Daniel E., Josiah Heyman, and Jeremy Slack. 2020. “Border Enforcement Developments Since 1993 and How to Change CBP.” Center for Migration Studies of New York. New York, NY. https://cmsny.org/publications/border-enforcement-developments-since-1993-and-how-to-change-cbp/
  • Bloch, Stefano and Daniel E. Martínez. 2020. “Cops Are Also Shooting Pets in Black and Brown Communities at Much Higher Rates.” Slate. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/cops-shooting-dogs-police-violence-racism.html.
  • Over the summer 2020, Professor Brian Mayer was able to develop a working relationship with the United Food and Commerical Workers union Local 99 representing some 24,000 workers in the state of Arizona - most of which are essential frontline employees in grocery stores. Together, they launched the Arizona Frontline Worker Survey which was completed by ~5,000 respondents in July 2020 and again by ~2,000 follow-up respondents in February 2021. Their data reveal disturbing high levels of mental health distress correlating with a lack of sufficient safety training and difficult encounters with customers. The results from the first wave in July have been covered in more than 30 news outlets nationally, including multiple televised interviews on Phoenix and Tucson local news stations. Brian’s research team has two papers under review for two special issues on COVID-19 for Public Health Reports and the International Journal of Worker Health Management. Data from the second wave in February are being finalized and we continue to apply for research grants to support additional data collection.