I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. My research lies at the intersection of scholarship on poverty, punishment, and governance in America. I have deployed a range of qualitative and quantitative methods to study how the state governs marginalized groups—particularly low-income Black and Brown communities—and how the dimensions of state governance, from everyday institutional interactions to population-level policies, intersect to shape the life chances of group members. In my current book project— Interlocking Institutions: Welfare, Punishment, and the Governance of Crossover Youth—I examine how the state manages children at the junction of child welfare and juvenile justice to illuminate the interlocking processes that both produce and constrain coercive control. My prior work has appeared in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Social Forces, American Journal of Epidemiology, Sociological Forum, and Social Science & Medicine. I received my PhD in Sociology from Stanford University in 2023 and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Watson Institute for International Affairs at Brown University from 2023 to 2025.
B.A., Sociology, Harvard University, 2010
M.A., Sociology, Stanford University, 2017
Ph.D., Sociology, Stanford University, 2023
Sirois, Catherine. “Contested by the State: Institutional Offloading in the Case of Crossover Youth.” American Sociological Review 88(2): 350-377.
Sirois, Catherine. “The Strain of Sons’ Incarceration on Mothers’ Health.” Social Science & Medicine 264:113264.
Sirois, Catherine. “Household Support and Social Integration in the Year After Prison.” Sociological Forum 34(4): 838-860.
Torche, Florencia and Catherine Sirois. “Restrictive Immigration Law and Birth Outcomes of Immigrant Women.” American Journal of Epidemiology 188(1): 24-33.
Western, Bruce and Catherine Sirois. “Racial Inequality in Employment and Earnings After Incarceration.” Social Forces 97(4): 1517-1542.
Western, Bruce, Anthony Braga, David Hureau, and Catherine Sirois. “Study Retention as Bias Reduction in a Hard-to-Reach Population.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(20): 5477-5485.
Western, Bruce, Anthony Braga, Jaclyn Davis, and Catherine Sirois. “Stress and Hardship After Prison.” American Journal of Sociology 120(5): 1512-1547.