Current Opportunities for Prospective Graduate Students

I am looking to supervise 1 or 2 MA and 1 or 2 Ph.D. students on the following SSHRC funded projects. This opportunity is suitable for Sociology undergrad or graduate students with a keen interest in education, family/parenting, and/or social inequality. My funding will provide Research Assistantships, data collection support, and conference travel related to the grants. Students working on these projects may also have an opportunity to co-publish and present papers at conferences. 

Each project seeks to answer a particular set of research questions. However, I will encourage you to ‘carve-out’ a unique project for your MA (major paper or thesis) or Ph.D. thesis. The projects are still in the early stages of development, and you will have an opportunity to build in questions/dimensions that align with your research interests.  

Project #1: National Stratification Systems of Higher Education, Parenting Logics, and Social Reproduction: The Case of the United States, Canada, and Germany

Drawing on an ecological perspective and theories of social stratification and parenting, this project expands the scope of contemporary parenting research by clarifying the relationship between national stratification systems, parenting logics, and social reproduction. The research team will conduct interviews, demographic surveys, and time diaries with 120 high-SES parents and a sub-sample of 24 low-SES parents in three strategic research sites sporting drastically different higher education systems (HE): Boston, United States, Toronto, Canada, and Berlin, Germany. The team will map the production of inequality across nations, using an ambitious comparative design to isolate how macro-level structures and parenting interact to form variable patterns of social stratification.

Project #2: Parental Guidance: Expert Advice and How Parents Respond to It

Parents bring differential resources and advantages to childrearing. In this era of intensive childrearing, the question of how parents are advised to manage their children’s leisure time, activities, and bodies, is a vital one. This project will analyze advice to parents about children’s cognitive development, schooling, and leisure time. We propose a multi­method approach: a content analysis of parenting advice and 50 interviews with parents. We will document changes over time through a historical content analysis. We pair this with face ­to ­face semi­-structured interviews with parents, creating a rich data collection strategy to analyze Canadian and American media texts and parents' responses to expert advice.

How to apply:

Step 1: If you are interested, please send an email with your CV, transcript, and a description of your research interests to: jaurini@uwaterloo.ca.  Suitable candidates will be contacted for a skype or phone conversation.

Step 2: Even if we determine there is a good ‘match’ (see Step 1), you will still need to apply formally to the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies graduate program. Successful MA and Ph.D. applicants will receive a funding package.

In addition to the projects described above, I am open to supervising students on a wide variety of topics that intersect with my expertise. I strive to offer my students RA, publishing and other professional development opportunities.

How to apply:

Step 1: If you are interested in exploring a project under my supervision, please send an email with your CV, transcript, and a description of your research interests to: jaurini@uwaterloo.ca.  Suitable candidates will be contacted for a skype or phone conversation.

Step 2: Even if we determine there is a good ‘match’ (see Step 1), you will still need to apply formally to the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies graduate program. Successful MA and Ph.D. applicants will receive a funding package.