About
Elly Field is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology, a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, and a predoctoral trainee at the Population Studies Center within the Institute for Social Research. Her research agenda focuses on two major areas: dynamics of racial segregation and economic inequality. Her dissertation project, entitled "How the Policy Link Between Schools and Neighborhoods Shapes Racial Segregation Dynamics," examines the individual-, neighborhood-, and school district-level processes that affect population dynamics within neighborhoods and schools. Her research starts from the fact that schools and neighborhoods in the United States are structurally linked by school district policies that assign students to schools based on where they live. Her dissertation examines how this type of social policy induces linkages across social domains that will have cascading effects on inequality.
In her research on economic inequality, Elly has a sole-authored paper in Demography on how material hardship impacts young women's health and contraceptive use. She demonstrates how poverty can spillover to affect women's reproductive heaelth through effects on cognitive burden and access to impair contraceptive use and efficacy.
Before entering the program, Elly worked in Washington, D.C. on evaluations of federal programs related to youth health and education. She received her B.A. from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY in 2013, with a dual concentration in Mathematics and Sociology.
