Hello there!

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. In my research, I apply and develop quantitative and computational methods to study fundamental sociological questions in new ways and gain new insights across a variety of research fields. My current work examines how friendship, family, political, and climate dynamics influence individual life chances and aggregate patterns of inequality. I focus on how individuals’ selection into and interactions within these social and natural environments collectively shape emergent dynamics of social stratification. Methodologically, I specialize in modeling causal effects, relational dynamics, multilevel phenomena, and heterogeneity within and between groups. My work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and published in outlets, including the Annual Review of Sociology.

I received a PhD in Sociology and Computer Science (minor) from Cornell University in 2024 under the supervision of Michael Macy (Cornell Sociology and Information Science), Filiz Garip (Princeton Sociology), Felix Elwert (UW-Madison Sociology and Statistics), Eleonora Patacchini (Cornell Economics), and Lillian Lee (Cornell Computer Science).

Research focus

Computational Social Science – Quantitative Methods – Stratification/Inequality – Social Networks – Family Demography – Educational Sociology – Political Sociology

News

• I was a visiting researcher at the Hertie School of Public Policy in Berlin, Germany. (June-July 2024)
• I was a speaker at the 2024 Lecture Series on Network Inequality at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, Austria.
• Together with Alison Schultz, I lead the project “The precious networks of the rich: How the wealthiest prevent progressive tax reforms.” at the 2024 Wealth Data Science Summer School in Bremen, Germany.
• My paper “Socioeconomic segregation in friendship networks: A network analysis of social closure in US high schools.” won the 2024 Best Paper Award from the Mathematical Sociology section and the section on Decision-making, Social Networks, and Society Section of the American Sociological Association as well as the 2023 Robin M. Williams Jr. Best Paper Award from the Department of Sociology at Cornell University.
• I presented my project “Socioeconomic segregation in friendship networks: A network analysis of social closure in US high schools.” at the 2022 meeting of the RC28 Research Committee on Social Stratification in London (April 2022), at the Measuring Belief Systems workshop at Princeton University (October 2022), at the MZES Colloquium at Mannheim University (October 2022), and at the Inequality Discussion Workshop at Cornell University (November 2022). Presented an updated version of this paper at PAA 2023 in New Orleans, Louisiana (April 2023), at Sunbelt 2023 in Portland, Oregon (June 2023), at ISA in Melbourne, Australia (June 2023), at NetSci 2023 in Vienna, Austria (July 2023), at RC28 in Ann Arbor, Michigan (August 2023), and at ASA in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (August 2023).

Contact

benrosche at princeton dot edu