Profiles for the current MFP Cohort can be found below. Click here to view previous cohorts.
Roger S. Cadena, Jr.
Roger S. Cadena, Jr.Graduate Institution: University of Notre Dame
Roger S. Cadena, Jr. is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Cadena’s research exists at the intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, and Latino/a/x sociology and politics. Drawing on in-depth interviews with U.S. Latinos, Cadena’s dissertation, The Construction, Connection, and Communication of Latinx Identities and Politics, is organized around three major themes: (1) how Latinxs construct interpretations of social structure, social identifications, and political parties; (2) the processes for how Latinxs connect those interpretations to political behavior; and (3) how Latinxs communicate those interpretations to their families, peers, and colleagues. His research has been supported by the National Institute of Social Sciences and several University of Notre Dame sources, including the Institute of Latino Studies, the Institute for the Study of Liberal Arts, and the Initiative for Race and Resilience. His work has been published in the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and in Sociology Compass. Before attending Notre Dame, Cadena was a high school social studies teacher in Chicago public schools. For leisure, Cadena enjoys listening to music and podcasts, watching TV/movies with good friends, and reading the many books he’s been gifted over the years.
Catherine Crooke
Graduate Institution: University of California-Los Angeles
Catherine Crooke is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles, where she also earned her MA. She earned her BA in comparative literature and society at Columbia University, her MSc in refugee and forced migration studies at the University of Oxford, and her JD at Yale Law School. Her research interests include the legal profession, legal procedure, access to justice, social change, and immigration law and policy. Crooke’s dissertation, Representing Refugees at the End of Asylum, investigates how immigration attorneys understand, manage, and persist in helping people navigate a politicized, control-oriented legal environment. Drawing on five years of participant observation at a non-profit legal organization and interviews with immigration attorneys and other legal professionals in Los Angeles, Crooke illuminates how adverse systemic conditions reconfigure lawyers’ professional strategies, identities, and impact. Crooke received the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and has received additional support for her research from the Center for Institutional Courage, the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, and the UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration. Outside of research, Crooke enjoys practicing yoga, exploring cities on foot, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending time with her partner and toddler.
Kristen L. Miller
Kristen L. MillerGraduate Institution: The Graduate Center, CUNY
Kristen L. Miller is a PhD candidate in sociology at the City University of New York (CUNY), Graduate Center. She earned her BA in international affairs from Northeastern University in 2015. Miller’s research interests include social movements, Black studies, culture and aesthetics, performance theory and everyday embodied practices. Her dissertation, Rideout: Freedom and Collective Movement in Black Biking Subcultures, is a multi-site ethnography on collective Black biking, or as participants refer to it, “bike life”, in the United States and South Africa. In this work, Miller examines events commonly known as “rideouts,” where large groups of mostly young Black men on bicycles, dirt bikes, and ATV’s pop wheelies and perform other tricks as they deftly navigate and often take over their city streets. She traces the personal, social, and political effects of the feeling of Black freedom experienced during rideouts in two U.S. cities, Baltimore and New York, and two South African cities, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Miller’s research has been supported by the Fulbright Research Award and CUNY’s Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative. In her spare time, Miller likes to bike around New York City, play tennis, and explore Johannesburg’s contemporary jazz scene.
Caylin Louis Moore
Caylin Louis MooreGraduate Institution: Stanford University
Caylin Louis Moore is a doctoral candidate in Stanford University’s sociology department and a Ford Foundation Fellow. Moore’s research agenda utilizes geospatial, quantitative, and qualitative methods to analyze criminal justice policy, law, policing, spatial inequality, and neighborhood change. His dissertation, Under Pressure: The Lifecycle of Criminal Classification, utilizes over two years of ethnographic research at California incarceration reentry programs and in-depth interviews with nearly 100 formerly incarcerated men and women to analyze how the state (co)creates criminal status in its inhabitants. For example, an emergent empirical article from the broader project extends research on collateral consequences and criminal courts by revealing previously uncovered mechanisms that prompt pre-trial detainees to adopt plea agreements at higher rates and under worse terms than their free counterparts. Moore’s research has received awards from several professional societies, including the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. He holds an MSc in Latin American studies from the University of Oxford, where he was a 2017 Rhodes Scholar. He received his BS in economics from Texas Christian University in 2017. Moore is the author of an award-winning book, A Dream Too Big: The Story of An Improbable Journey from Compton to Oxford.
Christopher E. Robertson
Christopher E. RobertsonGraduate Institution: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Christopher E. Robertson is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where he also earned his MA. Robertson completed a BBA in management at the University of Texas at Austin and an MA in sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington. Robertson’s research interests include crime, law, and deviance, population health, race and racism, and urban sociology. His dissertation, Covenanted-Policing: Policing, Spatial Racism, and Health (In)Equity in Minneapolis, MN, examines how historical spatial racism shapes contemporary policing practices and neighborhood health outcomes. Robertson is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar. He recently completed a research assistantship with the Minnesota Justice Research Center (MNJRC), where he co-authored a policy report that contributed to successful efforts to prohibit white supremacist group members from becoming licensed police officers in Minnesota. He has also contributed to local efforts to develop alternatives to policing by evaluating a community-led first-responder program (with the MNJRC) and a hospital-based violence intervention program (with the Hennepin County Healthcare Hospital System). Robertson’s work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, Health & Justice, and Socius. Outside of research and teaching, he enjoys spending time with his wife and children, listening to music, watching anime, and experimenting with food recipes.
Aya M. Waller-Bey
Aya M. Waller-BeyGraduate Institution: University of Michigan
Aya M. Waller-Bey is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Michigan, where she also earned a sociology MA. She holds a BA in sociology from Georgetown University. In 2015, Waller-Bey was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which supported the completion of her Master of Philosophy degree in education at the University of Cambridge. Her qualitative and comparative dissertation, No More Trauma: Black Student Racialization in College Admissions, examines narrative strategies of Black students in college admissions essays in response to narrative expectations, considering institutional type, gender, and pre-college experiences. She also examines how admissions officers interpret these narratives through interviews with Black undergraduate students attending a private historically and predominantly white institution (HPWI) and a private historically Black college and university (HBCU), and interviews with admissions officers at universities across the country. Waller-Bey is a recipient of the Ford Foundation Predoctoral and Dissertation Fellowship and the University of Michigan National Center for Institutional Diversity Anti-Racism Summer Research Grant. Her work has been published in the Atlantic, Contexts, and the Annual Review of Sociology. Outside of her research, Waller-Bey enjoys traveling, hot Pilates, writing op-eds, and visiting new restaurants.
