ORGANIZATION

Daniele Checchi

Patterns of transition from secondary to tertiary education

Daniele Checchi has been a Professor of Economics at the University of Milan (Italy). He holds an MA from Bocconi University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a PhD from the University of Siena. He has served in key advisory roles in Italy, focusing on education and public policy. His research interests include the economics of education, intergenerational mobility, labor market institutions, and union density. He is the author of The Economics of Education: Human Capital, Family Background, and Inequality (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and has published in leading journals such as Economic Policy, Journal of Public Economics, Socio-Economic Review, Economics of Education Review, and European Sociological Review.

Florencia Torche

The early origins of disadvantage: Prenatal exposures and individual health and wellbeing around the world

Florencia Torche is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Sociology and Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She holds a BA from the Catholic University of Chile and an MA and PhD in Sociology from Columbia University. Her research focuses on social inequality, social mobility, educational disparities, and family dynamics. Her recent work investigates how early-life exposures, starting before birth, influence individual health, development, and well-being, using natural experiments and causal inference approaches. Professor Torche has led major collaborative projects, including the first national social mobility surveys in Chile and Mexico. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.

Jennie E. Brand

Florencia Torche is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Sociology and Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She holds a BA from the Catholic University of Chile and an MA and PhD in Sociology from Columbia University. Her research focuses on social inequality, social mobility, educational disparities, and family dynamics. Her recent work investigates how early-life exposures, starting before birth, influence individual health, development, and well-being, using natural experiments and causal inference approaches. Professor Torche has led major collaborative projects, including the first national social mobility surveys in Chile and Mexico. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.

Michelle Jackson

Michelle Jackson is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. Her research focuses on how socioeconomic background shapes life chances, with a particular emphasis on the persistence of inequality in late industrial societies. Her work includes both theoretical and empirical studies, analyzing educational systems and socioeconomic inequality across a variety of countries. In her forthcoming book, The Division of Rationalized Labor, she examines changes in the division of labor in the United States over the past c.150 years. She uses historical, archival, and statistical data to argue that the division of labor has unfolded in ways quite unpredicted by classical theory. Whereas classical theorists assumed that specialized occupations would be responsible for an ever-narrower range of tasks, she shows that the forces of scientific development and rationalization in fact work to complicate tasks and responsibilities.

Hyunjoon Park

Hyunjoon Park is the Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology and Director of the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He was the secretary/treasurer of ISA RC28 from 2018 to 2023 and an incoming chair of American Sociological Association (ASA) Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section. His research examines the interplay of schools and families in shaping children’s educational outcomes, focusing on how institutional and policy contexts mediate these effects. He has authored numerous articles published in various journals, including Demography, Sociology of Education, and Social Forces and is the author of the book, Re-Evaluating Education in Japan and Korea: De-mystifying Stereotypes.