I am a sociologist who researches educational and labor market inequalities in the United States. I am particularly interested in how leadership and organizational policies can be leveraged to reduce social inequalities. I am primarily a quantitative scholar, and conduct research with large-scale administrative data, and survey experiments. My work has been published in Sociology of Education. I have received support for my research from the NaEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship and the Russell Sage Foundation.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University, where I am affiliated with the Population Studies and Training Center and Annenberg Institute for School Reform.

Research on Educational Inequalities

I am currently engaged in several ongoing research projects that examine variation in school district leadership effectiveness, processes for selecting school district leaders, and variation in school board decision-making.

In other work, I examine how the racial composition of schools impacts parents’ school preferences.

In a recently published Sociology of Education paper coauthored with Bonnie Siegler, we find that white parents significantly prefer schools with fewer Asian students, and that these preferences align with social stereotypes.

Coverage of this Research: School Diversity Notebook , Contexts Blog, SAGE Sociology Podcast.

In another recent Sociology of Education paper coauthored with Christina Ciocca-Eller and Kate Khanna, we examine how intermediate educational transitions – common in U.S. higher education institutions – contribute to inequality.

Gender Inequality in the Labor Market

I am Co-Principal Investigator (with Thomas DiPrete) on a new project using restricted data held by the U.S. Census Bureau to examine how employer pay differences contribute to ongoing gender inequality in the labor market, especially for highly-skilled women. We are additionally examining women’s firm transitions before and after motherhood. This project was recently awarded a Russell Sage Foundation grant.

I also examine how organizations contribute to gender inequality in the labor market. I am currently working on a co-authored project with Benjamin Elbers and Thomas DiPrete examining the factors that led to an increase in female representation on U.S. corporate board of directors since 2016.

I can be reached at greer_mellon@brown.edu or @greermellon on twitter.