She holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Policy and an MA in Sociology from Princeton University and a BA in Sociology from Columbia University. Broadly, she is interested in intergroup relations and boundary processes, especially as they pertain to race, ethnicity and nationalism. Most of her research explores the impact of demographic diversification––real and perceived––on intergroup relations in the United States. She draws on a range of quantitative methods and data sources, including original lab, survey, and field experiments. Ongoing projects examine the relationship between racial/ethnic diversity and cooperation, boundary-drawing in the wake of diversification, and lay understandings of “diversity.”

At RSF Abascal is writing up the results of four studies that examine how Americans classify themselves and others in terms of race/ethnicity and the consequences of these classifications for racial/ethnic inequality. The first two projects, which draw on nationally representative surveys, explore which people are likely to be classified by others as people of color or as Latino. The third project investigates whether people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be classified as White during traffic stops. The fourth project examines how measures of Asian socioeconomic attainment (e.g., income, net worth) varies when Asian identity is employed in different ways (e.g., self-identifying as Asian versus being of Asian ancestry.