Hello! I’m a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an Exchange Scholar at Harvard University. I’m also the Blog Editor for Contexts, the public-facing periodical of the American Sociological Association.
My primary research stream investigates how parents and children understand their roles and responsibilities to one another and how broader cultural and structural arrangements shape these understandings. My dissertation, recipient of the ESS Coser Dissertation Proposal Award, draws on more than 140 interviews with young adult college graduates and their parents to analyze parent-child financial relationships in the late 20s and early 30s.
The inspiration for my dissertation stemmed from two previous empirical projects examining college students’ relationships with their parents in the wake of COVID-19 campus closures. The first study, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, reveals how social class divides in elite college students’ expectations for parents’ roles gave rise to divergent coping strategies I labeled “privileged dependence” and “precarious autonomy.” The second, published in Socius with collaborators Arielle Kuperberg and Joan Maya Mazelis, examines the pandemic housing decisions of nontraditional undergraduates attending two public universities, revealing that expectations for parents’ roles also vary across life stages. Building on these insights, my review article in Sociology Compass proposes future directions for research on social class, parenting, and young adulthood.
My second research stream examines culture and inequality through the lens of race/ethnicity and religion. An article in the Annual Review of Sociology with Wendy Roth and Alejandra Regla-Vargas examines how people understand racial categories and why these interpretations matter. Ongoing projects investigate religious wealth inequality (with Melissa Wilde and Tessa Huttenlocher), racial differences in religious influences on vaccine hesitancy (with Evan Stewart), and universities as racialized organizations (with Alanna Gillis). My earlier work examined multifaith chaplaincy on elite college campuses (with Wendy Cadge) and interfaith dialogue following the 2016 presidential election (with Roman Williams).
My research has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, and Penn’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration.
Culture, social class, families, economic sociology, higher education, young adults, parenting, morality, race/ethnicity, religion, qualitative methods
Sociological Research Methods
Introduction to Sociology
Journal Articles
van Stee, Elena G., Arielle Kuperberg, and Joan Maya Mazelis. 2024. “Activating Family Safety Nets: Understanding Undergraduates’ Pandemic Housing Transitions.” Socius 10.
van Stee, Elena G. 2023. “Privileged Dependence, Precarious Autonomy: Parent/Young Adult Relationships Through the Lens of COVID-19.” Journal of Marriage and Family 84(1): 215-232.
Roth, Wendy, Elena G. van Stee, and Alejandra Regla-Vargas. 2023. “Conceptualizations of Race: Essentialism and Constructivism.” Annual Review of Sociology 49: 39-58.
van Stee, Elena G. 2023. “No Place Like Home?” Contexts [Feature Essay] 22(3):12-17.
van Stee, Elena G. 2022. “Parenting Young Adults Across Social Class: A Review and Synthesis.” Sociology Compass 16(9): 1-16.
van Stee, Elena G., Taylor Paige Winfield, Wendy Cadge, John Schmalzbauer, Tiffany Steinwert, Shelly Rambo, and Elizabeth Clifford. 2021. “Assessing Student Engagement with Campus Chaplains: A Pilot Study from a Residential Liberal Arts College.” Journal of College and Character 23(3): 215-238.
van Stee, Elena G., Wendy Cadge, and Rebecca Barton. 2021. “How Do Colleges and Universities Support Multifaith Chaplaincy? The Causes and Effects of Different Institutional Approaches.” Journal of College and Character 23(2):134-155.
Barton, Rebecca, Wendy Cadge, and Elena G. van Stee. 2020. “Caring for the Whole Student: How Do Chaplains Contribute to Campus Life?” Journal of College and Character 21(2):67-85.
Book Chapter
Williams, Roman R., William L. Sachs, Catherine Holtmann, Elena G. van Stee, Kaitlyn Eekhoff, Michael Bos, and Ammar Amonette. 2019. “Through One Another’s Lenses: Photovoice and Interfaith Dialogue.” Pp. 253–274 in Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion Volume 10: Interreligious Dialogue: From Religion to Geopolitics, edited by G. Giordan and A. P. Lynch. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Under Review
Wilde, Melissa J., Tessa D. Huttenlocher, and Elena G. van Stee. “Religious Wealth Inequality in America: The View From 1916.” R&R.
Stewart, Evan, and Elena G. van Stee. “Racialized Religion & Vaccine Hesitancy: Evidence from the General Social Survey.” Under Review. R&R.
Gillis, Alanna, and Elena G. van Stee. “The Pact: Exploring the Racialized Consequences of Colorblind COVID-19 Campus Policies.” Under Review.
In Preparation
van Stee, Elena G., “Negotiating Autonomy: A Dyadic Perspective on Parent-Young Adult Financial Relationships.”
van Stee, Elena G., “He Said, She Said: Leveraging Contradictions in Dyadic Family Interviews.” Manuscript in preparation.
van Stee, Elena G., “Social Class and Help-Seeking in College: Pandemic Insights and New Research Directions.” In preparation (abstract accepted) for Handbook of Generation COVID: Global Perspectives on Development with Implications for Social Work, Policy, and Practice, edited by R. Dimitrova and L. Ferrer-Wreder. Cambridge University Press.
Academic Book Reviews
van Stee, Elena G. 2019. “Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape: Religious Pluralism and Secularism in the Netherlands, by Pooyan Tamimi Arab.” Fieldwork in Religion 14(2):220-221.
van Stee, Elena G. 2019. “Keeping it Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys, by John O’Brien.” Fieldwork in Religion 14(1):99-100.
van Stee, Elena G. 2018. “The Urban Church Imagined: Religion, Race, and Authenticity in the City, by Jessica M. Barron and Rhys H. Williams.” Fieldwork in Religion 13(2):241-2.
Public Writing (selected)
Flores, Gabriela, Elena G. van Stee, Ariel Chan, and Angelica Qin. 2023. “Getting Both Sides of the Story: The Benefits of Dyadic Interviewing in Studies of Young Adulthood.” Contexts Blog (here).
van Stee, Elena G. 2023. “Who’s the grown-up here?” Contexts Blog (here).
van Stee, Elena G. 2023. “Why Bella went home (and why Lexie didn’t): Intergenerational authority, entitlement, and obligation through the lens of COVID-19.” Council on Contemporary Families blog, hosted by The Society Pages. (here).
van Stee, Elena G. 2023. “3 things the pandemic taught us about inequality in college — and why they matter today.” The Conversation. (here). Reprinted in The Conversation on Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2025).
van Stee, Elena G. 2023. “Unplugging from Politics.” Contexts 22(4):9.
van Stee, Elena G. 2022. “Social class matters at college. What happened when campuses shut down?” Work in Progress: Sociology on the Economy, Work, and Inequality (here). Reprinted in the ASA Children & Youth Section Newsletter, January 2023.
Exchange Scholar, Harvard University (2023 - present)
Blog Editor, Contexts (2023 - present)
Predoctoral Fellow, Institute of Education Sciences (2021- 2023)
Graduate Research Fellow, Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration, University of Pennsylvania (2020-2021 & 2023 - present)
Research Fellow, Office of Institutional Research and Analysis, University of Pennsylvania (2022)
Research Associate, Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, Brandeis University (2018-2020)