/// About shawna ///

I am currently a doctoral candidate in Sociology at Indiana University. Prior to IU, I received a BA from the University of Kansas and an MPhil in Sociology from Oxford University, under the auspices of a US-UK Fulbright Exchange Scholarship. At IU, I have also benefitted from a US Department of Education Jacob K. Javits graduate education fellowship. 

My current research centers on cross-national & transnational understandings of policy & law, from development to implementation to regulation. More specifically, my dissertation examines the divergent trajectories of equal employment policy targeting racial & ethnic minorities in the US, Great Britain & Canada. This work incorporates multiple sources of data, including personnel professional journals, court cases and large-scale data on labor force participation in an effort to elucidate the different pathways each country has taken in determining how to 'make sense of' race and ethnicity within the workforce, and how these decisions may relate back to structural inequalities within each country. This project builds on my previous work with Tim Bartley on the development of transnational organizational fields, as well as my work with Anthony Heath on cross-national ethnic penalties. 

As a corollary to my dissertation project, I have also been engaged in work exploring the methodological complexities of cross-national research. Most broadly, two papers with Anthony Heath & Stephen D. Fisher have explored cross-national surveys as a product (or by-product) of globalization, as well as the consequential forces of globalization on the enterprise of cross-national research. More specifically, my work with Tait R. Medina and J. Scott Long has explored the implicit assumptions of measurement modeling in a cross-national context.

I also have a strong interest in models for categorical data. From 2007 to 2009, I served as a methodological consult for the Kinsey Institute's International Survey of Relationships. Additionally, for the past four years I have been involved in teaching Categorical Data Analysis at the University of Michigan's ICPSR Summer Program.  

In my spare time, I enjoy exploring new international locales, good fiction & lots of college basketball [rock chalk, Jayhawk!]. I also volunteer as a Community Big with Big Brothers Big Sisters & work as an advocate for Jana's Campaign in memory of a wonderful friend.