Summer 2025 Department News Highlights
Summer greetings from BU Sociology! Here are some recent updates from our students and faculty:
- Pamela Zabala Ortiz was awarded The Mauricio Gastón Institute’s 2025 Andrés Torres Paper Series Award for her book project, Situating the “Afro” in “Afro-Latinx”: Toward a Sociological Understanding of Ethnoracial Authenticity.
- CISS postdoctoral fellow and Sociology instructor Tatiana Padilla received the Society for Research in Child Development’s “Small Grants Program for Early Career Scholars for her project Forced Separation: The Impact of Immigration Raids on Foster Care Admissions and Child Wellbeing.
- Two of Dr. Padilla’s undergraduate Research Assistants on the RAIDS Team, Zoe Solberg (Sociology) and Nayeli Quiles (Political Science) were accepted to a competitive fully-funded summer research program—the Next Gen Pop.
- Saida Grundy published an op-ed in The Guardian entitled, “Trump is terrified of Black culture. But not for the reasons you think”
“In his efforts to demolish and disappear Black culture and the institutions that support it, Trump has made a loud admission: if he truly believed that Black culture were inferior, he would be leaving it on display and intact. Its mere existence would prove white supremacy.” -Saida Grundy, The Guardian
- Recent PhD graduate Leping Wang is starting a new position as Postdoctoral Researcher at Vanderbilt University’s Sociology department.
- Kazi Mukitul Islam has been part of the 2025 Graduate Summer Fellows Arrive at the Pardee Center.
- Undergraduate Sociology major Xiaowei Yang has been awarded the 2025 Provost’s Scholars Award for Academic Exploration. And undergraduate student Chenjie Xu has been awarded the 2025 Provost’s Scholars Award for Academic Exploration. Congratulations!
- CISS postdoc Molly Richard will be starting as an Assistant Professor in Community-Engaged Research in the Department of Public Health at the University of Rhode Island in the Fall.
- Cati Connell, Sarah Miller, and Landon Lauder were all featured in the article “As Pride Month Ends, Learn More about BU Social Scientists’ LGBTQ-Focused Research and Book Recommendations”
- And Debby Carr was featured in BU Today article “Why Do We Keep Watching Reality Dating Shows?”
Stay tuned next week for updates about BU Sociology students and faculty at the upcoming ASA conference in Chicago!
