Courtney Frantz is a Doctoral Student and Graduate Center Fellow in the Sociology Department at the City University of New York. As a Gittell Doctoral Research Fellow, she is investigating whether the recent trend of “strategic philanthropy” among national foundations has impacted worker center grantees’ approaches to their own campaign goals. She is also developing a proposal for an ethnography of a horizontally structured, worker-owned cooperative, where she plans to examine the roles played by both the structure and the culture of cooperatives in women workers’ production of (and navigation among) gendered subjectivities. Ms. Frantz also teaches at Hunter College and works as a Research Analyst at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.
Sarah Kostecki is currently working toward her PhD in Political Science at the Graduate Center. She is also a Research Associate with the LIS Center, a cross-national data center that harmonizes microdata for use in comparative socio-economic research. Her research interests are centered around the relationship between politics, policy and economic outcomes for men and women in a cross-national perspective. Her current research involves utilizing a new income definition that takes into account the value of unpaid work (in the form of both housework and childcare) and non-cash services (health care, education, early childhood education and care, and housing) to measure inequality and poverty outcomes across different household types in the US and 5 additional high-income countries. The study shows that other factors, beyond income, are important for household well-being, especially for households in the bottom and middle of the income distribution.
Jack Norton is a research associate at the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice. He conducts research for the In Our Backyards project, and investigates how counties across the United States use their local jails. Prior to joining Vera, Jack was a fellow at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Jack received a BA in geography and humanistic studies from McGill University, an MA in geography from the University of Washington, and a PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from the CUNY Graduate Center.
Hamad Sindhi is a doctoral student in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research is situated at the intersection of environmental disasters and citizenship, specifically examining post-disaster state response and claims to benefits and protection by vulnerable communities. He is also passionate about pedagogy, and is in the process of earning the doctoral certificate in Interactive Technology & Pedagogy. Hamad has taught many courses at CUNY, including, Introduction to Sociology, Research Methods, and Sociology of the Internet. He is also involved in student government and advocacy, and is currently the Co-Chair for Communications at the Doctoral Students’ Council.
Alexandra Sullivan is a PhD Candidate in Geography at CUNY Graduate Center, a food, environment & society researcher and educator, and a food service & retail manager. Over the past 10 years, she has conducted and assisted in a variety of natural and social science research, in southeastern Pennsylvania, Long Island, New York City, and eastern Australia. The research topics were in such wide-ranging areas as geomorphology, soil ecology, population ecology, agricultural trials, urban agriculture, food commodity chains, and social movements. As a Gittell Graduate Research Fellow, she’s working with Dr. Michael Menser (Philosophy, Brooklyn College) and investigating public engagement of/community participation in NYC government, with special attention to post-Hurricane Sandy resilience and sustainability projects. Complementing her research work, she has also founded and/or been active in several student organizations and administrative committees at her undergraduate and graduate schools (most recently the CUNY Food Studies Collective and CUNY Food Chains). Additionally, she has developed secondary school and college-level food systems curriculum, and taught food studies to New York students in elementary school through college (via Spoons Across America, NSF Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12 Education, and CUNY Queens College). Last but not least, she manages an independently-owned grocery-cafe-apothecary in Astoria, NY.
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