2022 Social Issues Dissertation Award Winners
![]() Joseph Avery | First Place: Legal Data: Bias in the Law, and How Legal Technology can be Built to Help Correct for It Joseph Avery, Granting University: Princeton University Joseph Avery is an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami Herbert Business School, a Faculty Member of Miami’s Institute for Data Science and Computing, and an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. Dr. Avery’s research interests are at the intersection of business, law, and technology. His primary line of research employs the methods and tools of the computer, behavioral, and management sciences to consider artificial intelligence (AI) in three contexts: (1) perception of AI behavior, especially AI failures; (2) the intersection of AI and moral decision making; and (3) artificial legal intelligence. In 2021, Dr. Avery received a PhD in experimental social psychology from Princeton University. He also has a JD from Columbia Law School, and he completed a postdoctoral resident fellowship at Yale Law School. Adjacent to his academic work, Dr. Avery has practiced law, co-created an artificial legal intelligence named Claudius, and co-founded a National Science Foundation-supported legal technology company.
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![]() Joyce He | Second Place: Lean In or Don't Lean Out? Opt-Out Framing Attenuates Gender Differences in the Decision to Compete Joyce He, Granting University: University of Toronto Dr. Joyce He is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at UCLA Anderson School of Management. She received her PhD in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, and her Honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on understanding mechanisms for the continued persistence of gender inequality in labor markets, and what organizations can do to disrupt them. In her dissertation work, she departs from approaches that aim to “fix the women” or “fix biases in the mind” and focuses instead on structural changes rooted in organizational design to reduce inequality. Her findings so far demonstrate that changing promotion schemes from an opt-in choice frame (requiring self-nomination) to an opt-out choice frame (applicants are automatically considered) attenuates the gender gap in application rates by increasing women’s participation, suggesting the effectiveness of “opt-out” promotions in closing the gender promotion gap in organizations. Dr He’s research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Academy of Management Journal, Nature Human Behavior, and Journal of Vocational Behavior, and her work has been featured in Scientific American and Harvard Business Review. |
2021 Social Issues Dissertation Award Winners
![]() Effua Sosoo | First Place: Psychophysiological and Affective Reactivity to Vicarious Discrimination Effua Sosoo, Granting University: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Effua E. Sosoo received her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed her internship at the Bureau of Prisons. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Durham Veterans Affairs Health Care System. Her research focuses on the physiological and psychological impacts of racial discrimination on Black individuals. Her clinical interests center on serving and empowering Black and/or incarcerated folx. | |
![]() Gabriel Miller | Second Place: The Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS Incidence and Mortality Gabriel Miller, Granting University: Texas A&M University Gabe H. Miller, PhD is a medical sociologist with research and teaching interests in racial health disparities, political and policy determinants of health, LGBT health, critical race theory and racism, and racial and ethnic relations. His recent work has been published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, and Gender in Management: An International Journal. Dr. Miller's dissertation research examined the political and policy determinants of state-level HIV/AIDS Incidence and Mortality. Dr. Miller received a BA in Political Science and Africana Studies and a PhD in Sociology with concentrations in health disparities and race and ethnicity from Texas A&M University. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University in the Department of Sociology and the African American Studies Program. |
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