Visiting Scholar Fellowships

Visiting Scholar Fellowships is sponsored by Russell Sage Foundation (RSF). The Visiting Scholars Program offers individual scholars in the social, economic, political, and behavioral sciences the opportunity to pursue research and writing while in residence at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City.

Visiting Scholars Program | Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholars Program The Russell Sage Foundation’s Visiting Scholars Program provides a unique opportunity for select scholars in the social, economic, political and behavioral sciences to pursue their data analysis and writing while in residence at the foundation’s headquarters in New York City.

RSF's Visiting Scholar fellowship is one of the preeminent fellowships of its kind within the social sciences. During their time at the Foundation, scholars will interact with other scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, as well as Visiting Journalists , Visiting Researchers , Margaret Olivia Sage Scholars , and RSF staff in programs, communications, and publishing.

Current and previous scholars represent the diversity of the social sciences including anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology, as well as many other related fields (e.g., behavioral sciences, criminal justice, demography, education, history, law, public and social policy, public health, social epidemiology, social work, statistics, and urban planning, among others).

Apply to be a Visiting Scholar Meet Our Current Visiting Scholars Vice President, Tax & Income Supports Division, Urban Institute Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Pittsburgh Assistant Professor of Sociology, Duke University Assistant Professor of Strategy, University of Toronto Associate Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University–Newark Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Washington Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Connecticut Assistant Professor of Sociology, Queens College & The Graduate Center, City University of New York Assistant Professor of Sociology, Syracuse University Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Greensboro Plimpton Associate Professor of Planning and Urban Economics, Harvard University John Work Garrett Professor of Politics, Princeton University John L.

Senior Professor of American Institutions, Cornell University Assistant Professor of Sociology and Southern Studies, University of Mississippi Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University - New Brunswick Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University Explore Our 2026-27 Visiting Scholars and their Research Our Visiting Scholars come from a diverse set of backgrounds and disciplines.

Learn more about their work, meet our incoming class, or search all of our Fellows . Acs will analyze how community-level factors influencing economic well-being, autonomy, and belonging affect income growth at the bottom quintile in those communities.

Acs will draw on county-level data from the American Community Survey and the Urban Institute’s Upward Mobility Dashboard to examine the relationship… Ali will investigate how the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) mortgage programs shaped residential segregation and racial inequality in the United States during the mid-twentieth century.

The research will document where and to whom loans were issued and examine their relationship… Cheng will examine how elite wealth is infused into American policing. He introduces the concept of pseudo-state entities – organizational extensions such as police department foundations and political action committees that enable state actors to engage in otherwise administratively regulated activities.

Drawing on… Cowgill will advance the research agenda on noncompete agreements—clauses that limit workers’ post-employment mobility.

Building on a large-scale randomized field experiment conducted with two major employers, Cowgill finds that non-competes reduce mobility and earnings even when unenforceable and are often signed without… Since enactment in 2012, the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program has moved one in every five units of public housing out of the traditional public housing system and into other subsidy streams.

While approaches to rental housing assistance in the past several decades have focused on strategies aimed at poverty… Ince will use evidence from a two-year (2018-2020) ethnography of Risen Church, an interracial church in St. Louis, Missouri, to examine why DEI initiatives fail despite explicit commitments to their successful implementation.

Ince will use ethnographic, interview, and administrative data to develop a sociological theory… Jacobs will examine skilled migration as a central and growing hallmark of U.S. migration policy.

Using LinkedIn employment histories in tandem with longitudinal in-depth interviews, she will analyze how migration policy shapes the spatial and occupational mobility of skilled migrants moving between the United States and… More about Elizabeth Jacobs Jang-Trettien will examine housing markets in segregated neighborhoods in Baltimore.

Using over 400 interviews, she describes the emergence of unregulated markets, probing the institutional actors and real estate practices that become prevalent in such markets.

This project builds on the idea of “institutional… More about Christine Jang-Trettien Kirk-Werner and Mary Ellen Stitt will examine the operation and impact of programs that promise alternatives to criminal prosecution and punishment, including court-mandated mental and behavioral health and drug treatment, community service hours, and electronic monitoring.

Despite the popularity of such programs, little… More about Gabriela Kirk-Werner Levenstein will work on a book about the little-known fact that during the 1980s and 1990s the U.S. Army built the most successful large-scale example of publicly funded childcare in the nation’s history.

Drawing on oral history and archival research, Levenstein will demonstrate how a team of military wives developed the… More about Lisa Levenstein Meltzer will consider the physical and economic transformations in neighborhoods caused by extreme climate events.

She will examine the physical disrepair and reinvestment in housing and the ensuing population changes in neighborhoods hit hard by Hurricanes Sandy and Harvey in New York City and Harris County.

She will draw… More about Rachel Meltzer Mendelberg will study public opinion about affordable housing in the U.S. She will examine the paradox that while many Americans say they want government to improve housing affordability, proposals for affordable housing often encounter public resistance.

Using original surveys with novel measures, her early analyses find… More about Tali Mendelberg Mettler will investigate the place-based components of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, as well as more recent policy changes affecting rural areas, in order to understand the conditions under which policy changes can mitigate placed-based social and economic inequality and the political… More about Suzanne Mettler Parsons will examine the growing role of disability benefit programs—Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)—within the U.S. social safety net, particularly in rural regions experiencing long-term economic decline.

While these programs were originally designed to address health-… Perry will integrate data from over a dozen recent national surveys with a careful reading of Christian nationalist authors to examine how Christian nationalist rhetoric and ideology – a set of beliefs about America’s fundamentally Christian identity and social order – helps perpetuate economic inequality in the United… Smith-Doerr will conduct an inductive, qualitative study on the power dynamics that shape who benefits from artificial intelligence in the workplace.

She will use the U.S. long haul trucking industry as an important case study to examine how truckers encounter and resist narratives which assume that AI can substitute for… More about Laurel Smith-Doerr Stitt, together with Gabriela Kirk-Werner, will examine the operations and impacts of programs that promise alternatives to criminal prosecution and punishment, including court-mandated mental and behavioral health and drug treatment, community service hours, and electronic monitoring.

Despite the popularity of such… More about Mary Ellen Stitt Valentino will work on a book examining how ordinary Americans define discrimination and why those definitions matter.

Drawing on original mixed-methods data, including 40 in-depth interviews and two nationally representative survey experiments, Valentino analyzes how people decide what "counts" as racism, sexism, and… More about Lauren Valentino Zaloom will examine how U.S. middle-class families organize their financial lives across generations, from early adulthood through retirement.

Using ethnographic interviews and historical research, Zaloom will analyze how families use debt, savings, insurance, and long-term planning in ways that reshape their relationships… More about Caitlin Zaloom The Visiting Scholar Fellowship is one of the preeminent fellowships of its kind within the social sciences.

During their time at the Foundation, scholars will interact with other scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, as well as Visiting Journalists, Visiting Researchers, Margaret Olivia Sage Scholars, and RSF staff in programs, communications, and publishing. This residential fellowship requires significant foundation resources, and scholars are expected to engage fully in the intellectual life of RSF.

Apply to be a Visiting Scholar The Russell Sage Foundation’s Visiting Scholars Program provides a unique opportunity for select scholars in the social, economic and behavioral sciences to pursue their research and writing while in residence at the Foundation’s New York headquarters.

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