Publications, awards, and other accomplishments for Fall 2025

^‡ Faculty 
*Graduate Students 
Bolded names are current members of the WSU sociology department

Congratulations

• Vanessa Delgado^‡ was selected as a 2025-2026 Visiting Poverty Scholar, Institute for Research on Poverty at UW-Madison 
• Vanessa Delgado^‡ was nominated and appointed to the Sociology of Education Editorial Board

• Justin Denney^‡ was elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences “For shaping the understanding of how place combines with individual and family characteristics to produce and maintain health disparities, and for leadership in creating unique data and opportunities for other scientists”. More info at Washington State Academy of Sciences.
• Ish Green* won a Foley Graduate Summer Fellowship. 
• Safiya Hafiz* won a Foley Graduate Summer Fellowship.
• Xinyue Wu* participated in the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS) at NYU Shanghai (June 2025).
• Xinyue Wu* participated in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Data User Workshop (June 2025).
• Johnson, M. K. ^‡, & Ridgeway, S. (2024). Becoming independent and responsible adults: Does parental financial help interfere? Journal of Family Issues, 45(3), 571-591. doi.org/10.1177/0192513X231155600 was a finalist (1 of 5) for this year’s Best Family Financial Wellbeing Paper Award.
• Vanessa Delgado^‡ was awarded a Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Grant.
• Jennifer Sherman’s^‡ work on rural SNAP beneficiaries was mentioned in a New York Times article on November 4, 2025, “It Would Be Trump’s Honor to Pay for Food Stamps,” by Thomas B. Edsall. 
• Dr. Anna Zamora-Kapoor’s^‡ project “Implementing artificial intelligence to improve type 2 diabetes screening, diagnosis, and self-management in a rural clinic”, was selected and recommended to NIH for award.
• Dr. Steven Cassidy* successfully defended his dissertation, entitled “Declining Legitimacy: Eleven months in North Africa with the Army Reserve.”
• Dr. Shekinah Hoffman* successfully defended her dissertation, entitled “The Game Within the Game: How Women Navigate and Label Workplace Harassment in the #MeToo Era” today.
• Dr. Jair Johnson* successfully defended his dissertation, entitled “Material Well-Being and the Family: Understanding the Predictors and Implications of Material Hardship and Poverty for Mothers and their Older Children.”
• Jingyu Lang* received a certification in Computational Demography from the Max Planck Institute.
• Kayla Lendy* successfully defended her M.A. Thesis, entitled “How Class Position and Economic Growth Ideology Shape Public Support for Degrowth Policy” 
• Sydney Silva* successfully completed her M.A., entitled “Nothing but a Shitstorm: Cycles of Violence, Carceral Harm, and Survival in Rural Lives”

Publications

• Julie Kmec^‡ had an article, “Preparing a Racialized Equity Labor Force: The Role of Race, Gender, and Place,” published in Race and Social Problems
• Julie Kmec^‡ and former PhD student Jose Collazo Jr. had an article, “’Ah! But They are Such a Good Worker!’: How Perceptions of Worker Performance Affects Third-Party Response to Sexual Harassment,” published in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
• Steven Mejia^‡ published a book review of  ‘The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India’ by Gi-Wook Shin” in Social Forces.
• Steven Mejia^‡ published an article, “International Trade and the Environment: A Theory of Ecologically Beneficial Exchange, 1990-2020” in Social Science Quarterly. 
• Andrew Myers* co-authored a paper (Scott Landes et al. 2025) published in Health Affairs Scholar titled: “The disability mismatch: the case for a comprehensive disability status measure.”
• Xinyue Wu*, Kayla Lendy*, Mari Amorim^‡and colleagues at UW published a report for WA Department of Financial Institutions titled “Home Equity Sharing Agreements in Washington State”
• Xinyue Wu*, Mari Amorim^‡, and Sharon Kioko (University of Washington) published a report for the WA Department of Financial Institutions titled “Earned Wage Access Financial Services”
• Mari Amorim^‡ had a review of the book “Doubled-Up: Shared Households and the Precarious Lives of Families” by Hope Harvey, accepted for publication in the Journal of Housing and Society.
• Vanessa Delgado^‡ had a solo-authored publication, “Spillover Benefits: The Impact of State-Funded Healthcare among Low-Income Latino/a Immigrant Families,” accepted at Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 
• Jair Johnson* (with Lena Le and David Gent) published the article, “Pacific Northwest Hop Growers’ Attitudes and Perceptions Toward Sustainable Agriculture – A Mixed Methods Study” in Phytofrontiers.
• Erik Johnson^‡ and Scott Frickel had their paper “Inconvenient Truths: Earth Day Narratives of the US Environmental Movement” accepted at Mobilization.
• Pierce Greenberg (former WSU Sociology graduate student), Erik Johnson^‡ and Jen Schwartz^‡ had their paper “Social factors shape the geographic pattern of U.S. environmental criminal prosecutions” accepted for publication at Nature Sustainability.
•  Jennifer Sherman^‡ and Jennifer Schwartz^‡ had the article “‘Good Old Boys from Good Old Families’: Rural Criminal-Legal Involvements and the Reproduction of Social Inequality” accepted for publication in Rural Sociology.
• Mari Amorim^‡and student co-author Tara Prendergast (University of Arizona) had a paper titled “To Get Ahead or Ease the Burden? Socioeconomic differences in the Management of Universal Cash Transfers and implications For Economic Inequalities” accepted for publication at Social Service Review.
• Johnson, Monica Kirkpatrick^‡, Michael Vuolo, Xiaowen Han, and Jeylan T. Mortimer.  “Constancy of Self-Attitudes from Adolescence to Mid-Life: Findings from the 30-year Youth Development Study.” Forthcoming.  American Journal of Sociology.

Presentations

• Vanessa Delgado^‡ was an invited panelist on the Family Estrangement session at the American Sociological Association
• Vanessa Delgado^‡ was an invited panelist on the Immigration and Child Labor session at the American Sociological Association 
• Vanessa Delgado^‡ gave an invited talk on her book project at the University of Chicago
• Jennifer Schwartz^‡ and Jennifer Sherman^‡ presented “The Bare Minimum: Effects of Legal Deserts on Pretrial Jail Detention,” to the Rurality in Sociolegal Scholarship panel at the 5^th ISA Forum of Sociology, July 10, Rabat, Morocco.
• Jennifer Sherman^‡ presented “‘I Can’t Get Real Lawyers’: Rural Legal Deserts and Justice-Involved Individuals,” to the Access to Justice in Legal Deserts panel at the 87^th Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, July 31, Salt Lake City, Utah.
• Jennifer Sherman^‡ served as Organizer and Discussant of the “Qualitatively Researching Hard-to-Reach Rural Populations: Challenges and Opportunities” panel at the 87^th Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, August 1, Salt Lake City, Utah. Panelists included Ish Green*, Ash Plummer*, Whitney Shervey*, and Michelle Weston*.

• Jennifer Sherman^‡ served as a “reader” on “Authors Meet Readers: Rural and Small-Town America: Context, Composition, and Complexities” panel at the 87^th Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, August 2, Salt Lake City, Utah.
• Jennifer Sherman^‡ and Jennifer Randles (CSU-Fresno) presented “Can You Just Call Me: The Methodological Benefits and Tradeoffs of In-Depth Qualitative Phone Interviews,” to the Qualitative Methodology session at the 120^th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 9, Chicago, IL.
• Jennifer Sherman^‡ served as a panelist on “Not Working: Life Without a Job” invited thematic session at the 120^th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 11, Chicago, IL.
• Anna Zamora-Kapoor^‡ presented her research: Sleep health and cardiometabolic conditions in all Americans: Evidence from the OCHIN database, at the AIM AHEAD Annual Meeting in Dallas, TX on July 8th 2025.
• Vanessa Delgado^‡ was an invited speaker for the “Post Family Separation” panel for Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families
• Vanessa Delgado^‡ was interviewed and featured in The Conversation on a story about immigration-impacted students in higher education. 
• Christian Maynard*presented a paper entitled “US Cannabis Legalization 2015–2023: Implications for Use and Availability Among Adolescents” at the Cannabis Research Conference in Portland, OR. 
• Steven Mejia^‡ presented his paper, “The Structural Sources of Democratic Backsliding, 1960-2022,” at the Chicanx/Latinx Student Center. 
• Mari Amorim^‡ testified on work co-authored with Kayla Lendy* and Xinyue Wu* and others, titled  “Home Equity Sharing Agreements in Washington” at a Washington Senate Hearing (Senate Business, Financial Services & Trade Committee)
• Mari Amorim^‡ presented work co-authored with Kayla Lendy* and Xinyue Wu* and others, titled “Home Equity Sharing Agreements: Overview of Consumer Impacts” to the Consumer Finances Protection Bureau (CFPB)
• Mari Amorim’s^‡, Kayla Lendy’s*, and Xinyue Wu’s* work (in collaboration with others), titled “Home Equity Investments: Predation or Opportunity” was presented at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management conference 
• Mari Amorim^‡was a discussant for Session “Beyond the Score: Innovative Approaches to Consumer Debt, Creditworthiness, and Financial Resilience” at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management
• Mari Amorim^‡ was a discussant for Session “Aging and Intergenerational Supports: Economic and Care Resources Across Generations” at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management
• Christian Maynard* presented a paper entitled “Evolving Drug Policy in Washington: Trends in Jail Admissions from Criminalization through Decriminalization (Blake Decision) to Recriminalization, 2020-2024” at the American Society of Criminology in Washington, D.C. 
• Zoey Rawson* presented at the annual meetings for the Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health Science, presentation title unknown.