Students on the Job Market 2023-24

Short Bio
Byung Soo Lee is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. His research focuses on how Asian immigrant families in the United States experience the changes of family relations and the narratives of the families that reveal the gap between the subjective perception of family relations and the structural changes in a given society. His current research examines how Asian immigrant family members interpret the meaning of eldercare with the intersection of gendered experiences.

Short Bio
Jiaying Lin is a Sociology Ph.D. Candidate and Graduate Instructor at the University at Buffalo. Her research interests are Law & Society, Life Course, Domestic Violence and Qualitative Methods. Her dissertation “Understanding the Impact of the First Anti-Domestic Violence Law in China” uses social ecological model to examine the interplay of factors situated at the various levels of the social ecology in the Chinese context. These levels are: the narrative patterns of domestic violence related issues on the state-owned news media on the societal level; how judges handled domestic violence allegations on the institutional level; and different cohorts’ survivors’ legal consciousness on the individual level.

Short Bio
Laura Obernesser is a family sociologist. Her qualitative research focuses on how individuals idealize family, make sense of their relationships and roles within families and the effects these understandings have on their everyday experiences. Her research focuses on (1) family ideals: the desires, fears, and expectations held by individuals within families related to family life and how inequalities have effects on how individuals understand their relationship to societal expectations in the context of changing families and (2) agency: the behaviors and thoughts families engage in to cope with, and sometimes change their realities.

Her dissertation work focuses on the role ambiguity between grandparents and their adult children (parents) in rural families and how these care givers make sense of their family roles, relationships, and realities in the context of COVID-19. In her study, she examines parenting and grandparenting roles, class and gender inequalities, and how individuals within these families experience stress related to childcare and family.

Short Bio
Rachel/Zhe Zhang is a Sociology Ph.D. Candidate and Graduate Instructor at the University at Buffalo. Her research asks how neighborhoods shape experiences of health, crime, and family relationships using quantitative methods. She is currently working on her dissertation, and her dissertation studies the effect of neighborhood characteristics and changes (i.e., gentrification) on the well-being of individuals and families from the life-course perspective. Meanwhile, she is also working on other research projects, e.g., examining the role of romantic relationships for the education-health link among adults.