Graduate Research Funding

The Center for the Study of Inequality (CSI) invites proposals for grants from Cornell University graduate students that will support original social scientific research on inequality. Proposals will be judged on intellectual merit and potential for scholarly contributions.

The Center for the Study of Inequality's (CSI) goal is to foster social scientific research into the patterns, causes, and consequences of inequalities in all kinds of social and economic outcomes, including educational opportunities and outcomes, economic outcomes (e.g., wages, income, wealth), working conditions, status, prestige, political power, authority, health, and other valued “goods.” Inequalities may be patterned by race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, family background, immigration status, age, neighborhood, school, current family structure, organization or firm, occupation, industry, geographic location, region, or political units. Research can take many forms, including qualitative, quantitative, “mixed,” experimental or quasi-experimental, computational or data scientific, or comparative/historical. Proposals should be consistent with this mission.

The deadline for the 2025-26 grants is April 15, 2025.

Please email us with any inquiries.

How Large are the Awards?

Not to exceed $1000. Proposals that include hiring and training undergraduate research assistants are eligible for a “top up” of up to $500, for a maximum of $1500. The total resources allocated to the program is about $5,000.

What is the Proposal Deadline?

April 15, 2025. Awards will be announced in May, and the funds will be available as soon as we can process the paperwork.

What Activities are Supported?

Grants may support specialized research materials, Cornell undergraduate research assistance, incentives for experimental subjects, travel to and from research sites (as a supplement to travel funds provided by the Graduate School or individual departments/fields), and other direct expenses of data collection and analysis. Requests for specialized software or data purchases should be directed toward CCSS first.

Note that if you intend to apply for funds to pay for the labor of RAs, experimental subjects, or online survey participants (e.g., through M-Turk), you should budget for at least $18/hour or the equivalent.

Grants cannot be used to cover travel to conferences or workshops to present the results of research (see Graduate School conference travel grants); software or hardware purchases; academic year or summer stipends; health care or related benefits; student fees; publication fees; payments of any kind to Cornell faculty or staff; or payments to external faculty, staff, or student collaborators.

If you have a question about whether a specific expense is allowable, please contact CSI.

Who Can Apply?

We welcome proposals from graduate student affiliates of CSI at any stage of their training, and who are enrolled in any social science field at Cornell. However, in allocating the funds, we will give priority to strong proposals from graduate students who have taken SOC 5190 and/or demonstrated a commitment to CSI’s intellectual community (e.g., by attending events). Because funding for the program comes from CAS, we will also prioritize students in social science fields that are primarily based in this college.

Graduate students who have received small grants in the past are welcome to apply for support for a different project. All else equal, though, we will prioritize first‐time applicants.

Proposals to conduct research in collaboration with other Cornell graduate students are welcome, although the $1000 award cap per project still applies. Proposals to conduct collaborative research with Cornell faculty or with scholars outside of Cornell should demonstrate that the graduate student is taking the lead intellectual role on the project, not acting (implicitly or explicitly) as the senior or external scholar’s RA.

What Strings are Attached?

All funds must be used within one year of the award date. Recipients will need to

(1) submit a brief, final report on the use of the funds and the outcome of the research, and
(2) acknowledge CSI support in presentations or publications off the project.

How to Submit a Proposal

Proposals should include the following:

1) Cover letter with the name of applicant, netid, field of study, faculty advisor, anticipated graduation date, and a brief (1-2 sentence) overview of the proposal. If this proposal is for a collaborative project, include the names and academic affiliations of all collaborators.
2) Title, description of research, objectives, planned activities, and expected outputs. The research objectives should identify the core contributions of the proposed project relative to the existing literature on inequality, and the description of the design should be specific and detailed enough that we can have confidence that the project will in fact yield knowledge about the research question. (This does not, of course, mean that the you must show that the analysis will yield the expected results or confirm a hypothesis!)
3) A budget with an itemized list of, and brief justification for, expenses.
4) A timeline for the research.
5) Plans for follow‐up research and, if relevant, external funding proposals.
6) Any internal Cornell funding that has been awarded, e.g. CCSS, CSES, CPC, etc.
7) A Curriculum Vitae.

Not including the CV, the proposal should not exceed 1700 words. IRB approval (or evidence of exemption) is not required before you apply, but if your project involves human subjects, you will need to secure IRB approval before we can release the funds.

Please email the proposal in one document (.pdf or .docx) to John Niederbuhl jwn3@cornell.edu by April 15, 2025.

2025-2026

Gabriel Butler, Public Policy
Caregiving, Disability, and Economic Inequality in Later Life

Lili Dodderidge, Sociology
Shared Community, Shared Response? How Schools within the Same Neighborhood Respond to Nearby Violence

Katharina Geppert, Sociology
Traversing Borders, Cultures, and Laws: Gender, Power and Control in Cross-Nativity Marriages

Yuexing Hao, Human Centered Design
AI for Health Equity: Supporting Shared Decisions in Early-Stage Prostate Cancer

Ellie Homant, Communication
The Ecosystem of Third-party Intermediaries in the Creator Economy

Vrinda Kapoor, Applied Economics and Management
Employer Quality and Information Frictions in Spot Labor Markets: Evidence from India

Yuma Noritomo, Applied Economics and Management
Trading off Investment in Human Capital versus Productive Assets: Expected Risk and Return

2024-2025

Adrian Haws, Applied Economics and Management
Can Immigrants Transfer their Human Capital? Evidence from Linked Population Microdata

Senan Hogan-Hennessy, Economics
Mental Health and Labour Market Inequalities

Chuling Huang, Industrial and Labor Relations
A Comparative study of Chinese Agricultural Investments in Zambia

Vrinda Kapoor, Applied Economics and Management
Value of safety practices at the workplace

Minghui Ni, Psychology
Racial Homophily in Academic Mentoring Relationships: Understanding the Role of Mentee’s Self-Selection and Meta-beliefs

Laura Sullivan, Public Policy
Rural YIMBYism: Enacting a zoning law in a small town

2023-2024

Maame Boatemaa, City and Regional Planning
This is not my home: Place Attachment and Urbanization in Kumasi

Trevor Brown, Government
Political Construction of the U.S.’s Highly Unequal Health Care Workforce, Structured Along Race, Class, and Gender Lines, Through a Historical Lens

Nan Feng, Sociology
The Relationship Between Income Inequality and Social Capital Over the Past Half-Century

Wonjeong Jeong and Cody Reed, Sociology
‘Living Gender’: Examining the Gendered Allocation of Household Space

Hyo Joo Lee, Sociology
"Local Childcare Availability and Maternal Employment: A Case Study of South Korea"

Hao Liang, Sociology
Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Ethnic Minority (re)Distribution in Metropolitan Area in Japan from 2000 to 2020

Carlos Lopez-Ortiz, City and Regional Planning
Moving Up or Down the Ladder? Disentangling the Effects of Slum Upgrading on Social Mobility in Global South Cities

2021-2022

Alexandra Cooperstock, Sociology
Place-Based Education Investment: Promise Neighborhoods and Student Academic Outcomes

Jacqueline Ho, Sociology
Can Every School be a Good School? Decoding the cultural context of school choice in Singapore

Joseph Lasky, Government
Mapping Patterns of Dispute Resolution: Exploring the Determinants of Forum Shopping in Togo and Benin

Vincent Mauro, Government
The Politics of Social Policy Formulation

Colten Meisner, Communication
Digital Labor at the Margins: Algorithmic Discrimination in the Platform Economy

Tianyao Qu, Sociology
Gender Presentation and Emotional Consumption: The Negotiation of Gender Relations in Chinese Affective Live-stream Economy

Juhwan Seo, Sociology
Performing Racial Authenticity? Employment Stratification at Suburban Ethnic Community Restaurants

Katherine Zaslavsky, Sociology
An Experimental Approach to Race, Immigration, and Inequality

2018-2019

Karina Acosta, City and Regional Planning
A Spatial Inequality Breakdown of Child Poverty in Colombia

Neelanjan Datta and Germán Reyes, Economics
The Effect of Government Social Programs on Perceptions of Inequality

Erin McCauley, Sociology
Stigma by Association: An Experimental Evaluation of Parental  Incarceration and Teacher’s Evaluation of Students and their Work

Yoselinda Mendoza, Sociology
Housing Precarity Among Mixed-status Latina/o Immigrant Families

Emily Parker, Policy Analysis and Management
Health Without Wealth: How Federally Qualified Health Centers Address Socioeconomic Inequality

Mikaela Spruill and Stephanie Tepper, Psychology
Increasing Support for Reparations: The Role of Framing, Stereotype Endorsement, and Structural Beliefs about Inequality

Phoebe Strom, ILR
Catfight or Contention? Gender Bias and Third-Party Perceptions of Organizational Conflict

2017-2018

David De Micheli, Government 
Racial Reclassification, Education Reform, and Political Identity Formation in Brazil

Yuqi Lu, Sociology
Spatially Concentrated Disadvantage in the Form of Unequal Access to Neighborhood Resources, Amenities and Services: Evidence from Google Maps Data

Vincent Mauro, Government
The Effects of Party System Strength on Redistribution in Sub-national Brazil

Meaghan Mingo, Sociology
Race and Decision-Making in School Discipline

Mario Molina, Sociology
The Co-Evolution of In-group Favoritism and Group Structure

Benjamin Ruisch, Psychology
Learning prejudice: How asymmetries in associative learning shape racial prejudice

Shruti Sannon, Communication
Privacy and Power in Digital Labor Markets

2016-2017

Bridget Brew, Policy Analysis and Management & Sociology
Corrections Officers’ Views and Decision-Making Processes

Kayla Burd, Law, Psychology, and Human Development and Michael Creim, Human Development
Criminal Caricature: A Survey of Crimes Stereotypes

Youjin Chung, Development Sociology 
Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscapes: Gender, Power, and the New Enclosures in Coastal Tanzania

Megan Doherty Bea, Sociology 
Socio-spatial Analysis of Payday Lenders within Changing Contexts of Residential Segregation in the United States

Theresa Rocha Beardall, Sociology 
Police Contracts, Community Contestation, and Legal Authority in Urban Spaces

Delphia Shanks-Booth, Government
Information vs. Ideology: Recognizing (Government) Benefits in the Submerged State

2015-2016

Michael Allen, David De Micheli, and Whitney Taylor, Government
Who Supports Redistribution? Group Norms, Private Preferences, and Social Desirability

Mauricio Bucca and Mario Molina, Sociology
Legitimation or Differential Perception? An Experimental Approach to the Study of Beliefs about Inequality

Alex Currit, Sociology
Social Environment, Activity Spaces, and Health Inequality

Sebastian Dettman, Government
Citizens in Context: Participation, Citizenship and Local Inequality in Urban Indonesia

Allison Dwyer Emory, Sociology/Policy Analysis and Management
Family Experiences of Pretrial Incarceration
(with support from the ISS Mass Incarceration Project)

Yuanyuan Liu, Sociology
Gender Differences in Endogenous and Exogenous Peer Effects on Academic Achievement: A Network Approach

2014-2015

Kyle Albert, Sociology
Professionalization or Profits? Examining the Rapid Growth and Labor Market Value of Occupational Certification Programs in the United States

Rachel Behler, Sociology
‘Locating’ HIV Risk Behaviors: Examining the Role of Individual-Organization Affiliation Networks in HIV Transmission

Justine Lindemann, Development Sociology
Reimagining the City: Race, Food, and the Production of Space

Tamara McGavock, Economics
Crisis, Sibling Inequality, and Transfers as Compensation: Evidence from Indonesia

Paul Muniz, Sociology
A Multi-level Model of Permanent Supportive Housing Retention in Los Angeles, CA

Mallory SoRelle, Government
Consuming Citizenship: The Political Development and Consequences of US Consumer Financial Protection Policy

Martha Anna Wilfahrt, Government
The Politics of Social Service Delivery in Rural Senegal, 1880-2012

2013-2014

Rachel Behler, Sociology
‘Locating’ HIV Risk Behaviors: Examining the Role of Individual-Organization Affiliation Networks in HIV Transmission

Hilary Holbrow, Sociology
Shall I Stay or Shall I Go? Local Institutional Determinants of Immigrant Integration

Ankita Patnaik, Economics
Making Leave Easier: Better Compensation & Daddy-Only Entitlements

Emily S. Taylor Poppe, Sociology
Going it Alone: Legal Mobilization and Efficacy in the Foreclosure Crisis

2011-2012

Daniel DellaPosta, Sociology
Differentiating the Effects of Status and In-Group Preference in Social Exchange: A Laboratory Experiment

Alicia Eads, Sociology
A Threat to the System: Political Responses to Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party

Emily S. Taylor Poppe, Sociology
Client Attributes and Legal Outcomes: How Race and Gender Impact Lawyers’ Actions

Kyle Siler, Sociology
Influences of Luck on Subsequent Decision-Making in Online Poker

2010-2011

Carlo Lutz, Sociology & Inequality
Rwandan Miracle- The Role of Top-Down Leadership in Development

Joyce Main, Learning, Teaching, & Social Policy
Graduate Student- Faculty Advisor Relationships: Does Gender Match Matter for Student Educational and Employment Outcomes

Emily Rosenzweig, Social Psychology
Implicit Gender Identity and its Behavioral Implications

2009-2010

Emily Hoagland, Sociology
The Effects of Organizational Support on the Perception of Women Political Candidates

Christin Munsch, Sociology
Talking to Men about Masculinity: A Qualitative Examination of Masculinity and Compensation

2008-2009

Emily Hoagland, Sociology
Supporting Women Candidates: The Effects of Fundraising Organizations on the Political Success of Women

In Paik, Sociology
Developing a Diverse Academy: Examining Women and People of Color in the Ph.D Pipeline

Jared Peifer, Sociology
Religion in the Financial Market: The Case of Religious Mutual Funds

Chris Yenkey, Sociology
Financial Illiteracy as a Contributor to Wealth Inequality in Developing Countries: A micro-level analysis of shareholding on the Nairobi Stock Exchange

2007-2008 (In partnership with the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center)

Nicolas Eilbaum, Sociology
Undocumented Immigrants in New York City: Hope and Fear

Jennifer Lauture, Sociology
Never-Married Black Women: The Roles of Social Distance and Racial Exclusion

Bartolo Ligouri, Sociology
High Stakes Tests and Teacher Resistance: New York City Schools in an Era of Increased Accountability

Catherine Taylor, Sociology
Stress, Status, and Gender in Decision-Making Groups

Jennifer Todd, Sociology
Under Pressure: Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement in the Era of School Accountability

Yujun Wang, Sociology and Michael Genkin, Sociology
Understanding Onomastic Mechanisms in Immigrant Assimilation

2006-2007 (In partnership with the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center)

Youngjoo Cha, Sociology
The Increase in Gender Earnings Inequality among Professional and Managerial Workers and the Gendered Norm of Overworking

Diana Hernandez, Sociology
Living in Paradox: Low Income Families, Home and Neighborhood Challenges and (Non)Participation in the Legal System

Li Ma, Sociology
Social Inequality during the Deinstitutionalization of Hukou in China

Christin Munsch, Sociology
Campus Climate Survey

Catherine Taylor, Sociology
Stress, Gender, and Numerical Minority in Goal Oriented Groups

Sarah Thebaud, Sociology
Institutions, interactions and entrepreneurship: A cross-national study of gender inequality in venture creation

Chris Yenkey, Sociology
Jeri Grows up Fast: An Ethnographic Account of Emerging Stratification in Rural Brazil