Penn Sociology News

Haley Pilgrim, Penn Sociology graduate student, won the First Annual Grad Ben Talks social science division award and audience choice award for her presentation titled Accidentally Passing. Ben Talks is a day of TED Talk-style presentations by Penn Arts and Sciences graduate students representing the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and professional master's programs. Pilgrim received 30% of the audience choice votes from an audience of undergraduates, faculty, staff, fellow graduate students and online viewers. List of presenters and information on the competition can be found here.

Daniel Aldana Cohen was quoted in the Huffington Post last week regarding the potential significance of ACLU local resistance movements against internet activism. The full article can be found here.

Linda Aiken has been named the 2017 recipient of the International Council of Nurses’ (ICN) Christiane Reimann Prize. The ceremony will take place in May in Barcelona. Aiken will also receive an honorary degree for the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia. More information can be found here.

Steve Viscelli spoke with The Wall Street Journal earlier this week about his work and research in the trucking industry along with discussing his new book, The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream. The full text can be accessed here.

Steve Viscelli spoke with The Atlantic earlier this week on automating the trucking industry and the job losses that can occur - not necessarily a bad thing for the industry. You can read the full article here.

Dorothy Roberts has been awarded the inaugural Mamie Phipps Clark and Kenneth B. Clark Distinguished Lecture Award from Columbia University's department of psychology. More information on the award can be found here.

Last week, Vintage Books released the Twentieth Anniversary Edition of Roberts' book Killing the Black Body: Race Reproduction and The Meaning of Liberty, with a new preface. She will be giving a talk about the new edition at Strand Bookstore in New York City next Tuesday, February 21. More information about the event can be found here.

Last week Jere Behrman participated in the Mexican launch of the 2017 Lancet Series on Early Childhood Development at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. The audience was about 400 people from academia, the Mexican government (including the Ministers of Health and Finance), international organizations, and the press. Rafael Peres-Escamilla from Yale and Behrman gave the basic presentation (in Spanish) after Gilles Bergson, Director of the Sackler Institute at the New Your Academy of Science introduced us (we three are in the photo with the banner, with Rafael on the right).  This is one of about 10 launches of this series worldwide – Jere also participated in launches in India in October and in Chile in December. This the third Lancet Series on Early Childhood Development;  Behrman also was a co-author in the 2007 and 2011 Lancet Series, which have had considerable impact in making early childhood development  much higher priority on the global agenda and the agendas of many countries. The current series estimates that about 250 million children under five years of age in low- and medium-income countries are at risk of not fulfilling their potential, with substantial costs to society, and evaluates alternatives for alleviating this problem.

Steve Viscelli gave insight to Trucks.com on the trucking industry and its dangers. You can read the full article here.

Steve also spoke with Vocativ about the mental health issues that are common in the industry. The full article can be found here.

Amanda Barrett Cox has published an article for Sociology of Eduation on creating and maintaining social capital with the help of organizations. You can read the full text here.