The Stone Center will welcome its fourth cohort of postdoctoral scholars in September 2022. The two incoming scholars, each appointed for a term of two years, were selected from a large pool of applicants. Tina Law was selected for the postdoctoral position focused on racial inequality, and Manuel Schechtl for the position that focuses specifically on high-end wealth inequality.
Law is a sociologist who studies race, inequality, and social change in U.S. cities. She examines the relationship between urban change and racial inequality, with an emphasis on identifying and measuring the social impacts of transformations in housing for racially minoritized residents. She also examines the relationship between social change and racial equity through research on racially minoritized residents’ use of rebellion and other informal strategies to foster political empowerment and self-determination. Her research primarily uses quantitative and computational methods, and she is interested in developing new ways to use oral history, natural language processing, and network analysis to better understand urban inequality. Law is expected to receive her Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University in September 2022.
Schechtl is a sociologist with research interests in the policy determinants of poverty and of income and wealth inequality. His research is centered around different dimensions of tax policy and their consequences. Schechtl’s recent work is concerned with comparative fiscal impoverishment, i.e., the fraction of people who are taxed into poverty across rich countries. One focus of his research on economic inequality concerns differential tax treatment across family types. During his postdoctoral period, he will work on multiple facets of wealth inequality and accumulation, with a particular focus on the impact of inheritance taxes. He is expected to receive his Ph.D. from Humboldt University Berlin in July 2022.
“We are immensely excited that Tina Law and Manuel Schechtl will join our team this fall,” said Janet Gornick, director of the Stone Center. “We intentionally select postdocs who will contribute to the Stone Center’s current portfolio of research and, at the same time, expand the range of our existing work. Tina’s important research on racial inequality and social change, using computational methods, will broaden the scope of work carried out in the Stone Center, and Manuel’s innovative work on taxation and inequality will extend research conducted under the auspices of the GC Wealth Project.”
The Stone Center’s expansion of its postdoctoral scholars program is funded by a multi-year gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation. The gift has allowed the Center, in addition to other initiatives, to add two new postdocs a year, starting in September 2019. Law and Schechtl will join the Center’s third cohort of postdoctoral scholars, who started their two-year terms in the fall of 2021: economists Ignacio Flores, whose research focuses on the historical evolution of wealth and income inequality, and Rafia Zafar, who investigates intergenerational mobility in developing countries.