Three new Assistant Professors will join the Sociology Department beginning this fall.

Daniel Fridman’s current research focuses on the intersections between culture, economic expertise, and the economy. He is working on a book manuscript about the role of best-selling financial success books in shaping economic actors, based on a two-year ethnography with groups of readers of financial self-help in New York City and Argentina. He is also working on a project about boxing cultures in Latin America with historian David Sheinin. Daniel’s articles have appeared in the journals Qualitative Sociology, Economy and Society, Left History, Latin American Essays, and Apuntes de Investigación. Daniel received his PhD in Sociology in 2010 from Columbia University, where he was a Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP). He previously studied sociology at the University of Buenos Aires and worked for the National Statistics Institute in Argentina.

Ken-Hou Lin studies inequality, finance, organization, race, and quantitative methods, with a particular interest in unconventional data and statistical graphics. His research examines the connection between the rise of finance and growing inequality in the United States. His other research projects explore how race, gender, education, and sexual orientation jointly shape the interaction among millions of internet daters on a mainstream dating website. Lin received his BA in sociology from National Taiwan University and his PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013.

Harel Shapira is an ethnographer who writes about political identity with an emphasis on right-wing politics in the United States. His book Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America (Princeton, 2013) examines the civilian volunteers who patrol the United States-Mexico border. Currently, he is conducting research on the National Rifle Association in order to better understand why people own guns. His articles and reviews have appeared in Contemporary Sociology, Public Culture, and Sociological Quarterly. Professor Shapira holds a PhD from Columbia University (2010) and for the past two years has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.