Alexandra (Sasha) Killewald will be the next Director of the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics (CID) at the University of Michigan, effective July 1.
Killewald returns to U-M as Professor of Sociology at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the inaugural Robert F. Schoeni Professor, Institute for Social Research.
By serving as a tool to spark collaborative and mold-breaking scholarship, the Robert F. Schoeni Research Professorship will support research related to Schoeni’s passions, such as economics, population studies, demography, health and aging, survey methodology and public policy.
Killewald was previously Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, and will succeed founding director Fabian Pfeffer, who on October 1 will become Professor of Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) in Germany.
“I am honored to be named the next director of the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics. Wealth inequality in the United States is extreme, but it’s rare to have a research center focused on its study,” Killewald said. “CID brings wealth inequality scholars together in a critical mass to learn from each other and advance research in ways that are only possible in collaboration. Under Fabian’s leadership, CID has established a strong commitment to mentorship and intellectual community. I share these values and look forward to continuing to grow and develop the CID community.”
“I am honored to be named the next director of the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics. Wealth inequality in the United States is extreme, but it’s rare to have a research center focused on its study,” Killewald said.
Her appointments are pending approval by the Board of Regents.
“Sasha is the ideal next leader of CID: her path breaking work on social inequality and wealth as well as her great commitment to mentoring junior scholars align perfectly with CID’s mission,” Pfeffer said. “I have no doubt that under her leadership CID will continue to flourish and serve as one of the nation’s leading organizations for basic research on social inequality and the training of the next generation of inequality scholars.”
Sasha studies intersecting issues of social inequality in the U.S., with an emphasis on the relationships among work, family, and money. She researches the impact of gender on work and family, analyzing how marriage and parenthood affect wages, employment patterns of mothers, what economic factors impact divorce, and more. Sasha also analyzes how wealth inequality persists across generations and the intergenerational racial wealth gap.
Killewald received her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Sociology from the University of Michigan in 2011. Prior to her appointment at Harvard, she was a researcher at Mathematica.
Killewald’s research has been published in journals including American Sociological Review, Demography, Social Forces, and Journal of Marriage and Family. She is the recipient of the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award from the ASA Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility and has received article awards from the ASA Section on Family and the ASA Section on Sociology of Population.
Pfeffer will be maintaining a partial appointment at the Institute for Social Research to continue to lead the Wealth and Mobility Study. For more information, please visit the center website.
