My current research projects include:

• Gender, race, and professional advancement in STEM. The ADVANCE at UNM program funded by NSF, in which I am co-PI, involves a research component on whether Dobbin and Kalev’s “managerial engagement” model of diversity promotion works in the university context. Kathleen Thelen and Alvin Tillery and I put these ideas into practice at the 2018 APSA Hackathon.  Yusaku Horiuchi, John Carey and I (with others) studied faculty hiring preferences using conjoint analysis, and found that faculty at UNM and UNR are 11 to 21 percentage points more likely to prefer a job candidate who identifies as Native American, Hispanic-Latino, or African-American. Michael Chwe and I (with others) wrote a paper about the biases of Google Scholar and other citation counts. With Nadia Brown, Yusaku Horiuchi, and David Samuels, I surveyed political scientists about their perceptions of leading disciplinary journals and wrote an article for PS that probed reasons for publication gaps to advance goals of the APSA Task Force I co-chaired with Frances Rosenbluth.
• Bystander intervention to improve the climate in STEM workplaces. I am PI of a project (NSF #2000448) to develop a bystander intervention curriculum to reduce harassment, micro aggressions, and incivility in engineering and other STEM workplaces with the goal of broadening the participation of women and under-represented minority groups. I am collaborating with Sharyn Potter, Jane Stapleton, and Elizabeth Moschella of University of New Hampshire (who created the original Bringing in the Bystander® program), Justine Tinkler and Makeiva Jenkins of University of Georgia, and Amir Hedayati, Melanie Dominguez, John Wagner, Lisa Marchiondo, Ryan Jacobson, and Chuck Fleddermann of UNM. The project implements managerial engagement theory by involving engineering faculty as facilitators of bystander intervention workshop in their labs and classrooms.
• NSF-AGEP Catalyst Alliance. I am lead PI of a catalyst alliance involving UNM, Arizona State University, and University of Oregon, which aims to promote the recruitment, retention, and advancement of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in STEM, based on Dobbin and Kalev’s “managerial engagement” and Correll’s “small wins” approaches to organizational change. UNM co-PIs are Jesse Aleman and Liz Godwin; ASU PIs are Magda Hinojosa and Libby Wentz; and Oregon PIs are Nadia Singh and Benjamin Alemán.
• Enacting Equality. Francesca Jensenius and I are writing a book analyzing the effects of equal rights laws on social norms and practices. We analyze the expressive, command-and-control, and economic incentive power of the law on three issue areas: violence against women, women’s economic agency, and reproductive choice.
  •  Expressive power and anti-violence legislation. Our article in World Politics argues that laws intending to combat violence, and the social mobilization and media coverage surrounding their enactment and implementation, generate expressive power. Though analysis of four waves of the official survey on Dynamics of Household Relations (ENDIREH), we find evidence consistent with a change in social norms surrounding intimate partner violence.
  • Incentive-power and economic agency. Through cross-national analysis of some 150 countries, we find a strong association between the ways that states enable, or constrain, women’s agency in family law and several empowerment indicators. Through in depth ethnography and individual interviews, we analyze whether and how financial incentives affect men’s parenting roles.
  • Control over reproductive choice. We analyze the consequences of state bans and state funding for reproductive choices, focusing on IVF, thanks to funding from the Norwegian Research Council.
• 3-D printing of fiber-reinforced concrete buildings. I am collaborating in a multi-institution and multi-disciplinary effort led by Volker Sick at the University of Michigan to combat global warming, revolutionize housing, and change the wasteful way we live.