Aliya Saperstein
Professor Saperstein received a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California-Berkeley. She has been a Visiting Scholar at Sciences Po and the Russell Sage Foundation, and previously taught at the University of Oregon before joining the Stanford faculty in 2011. In 2016, she was recognized with the Early Achievement Award from the Population Association of America. She has also served on expert committees for the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and Medicine, tasked with producing consensus studies on The Use of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Research (2024) and Measuring Sex, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation (2022).
Professor Saperstein's research focuses on the social processes through which people come to perceive, name, and deploy seemingly immutable categorical differences —such as race and sex—and how such processes create and maintain social inequality. Her current research projects explore several strands of this subject, including:
- The implications of methodological decisions, especially the measurement of race/ethnicity and sex/gender in surveys, for studies of stratification and health disparities.
- The relationship between individual-level category ambiguity or fluidity and the maintenance of group boundaries, stereotypes, and hierarchies.
This research has been published for social science audiences in the American Journal of Sociology,the Annual Review of Sociology, Demography, Gender & Society and Ethnic and Racial Studies, among other venues, and for general science audiences in Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and PLoS One. It also has been recognized with multiple article awards, and gained attention from national media outlets, including NPR (twice) and The Colbert Report.
