Liza G. Steele

Liza G. Steele is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York (CUNY), with dual appointments at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center. She is also a faculty affiliate at the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR). Her research bridges Sociology and Political Science, examining attitudes toward immigrants/refugees, income inequality, ethnic diversity, social mobility, and welfare policies through cross-national comparative studies. She co-founded the Social Policy Preferences Network and employs mixed-method approaches including computational analysis.

Education includes a PhD and MA in Sociology from Princeton University, a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University (SIPA), and a BA in Political Science from Columbia College.

Her research focuses on:

• Social policy preferences and wealth inequality in global contexts
• Measurement methodologies for ethnic diversity
• Attitudinal studies on immigration using conjoint experiments and social media analysis
• Comparative studies of Brazil, China, and Western societies

Publications demonstrate consistent focus on migration attitudes, inequality metrics, and redistributive policies. Recent work emphasizes experimental designs (conjoint surveys) and computational methods (topic modeling), with geographic expansion to Asian and Latin American contexts.

Awards include:

• Graduate Student Paper Award, ASA Children and Youth Section (2011)
• Graduate Student Paper Honorable Mention, ASA Community and Urban Sociology Section (2011)

She teaches Statistics and Global Social Stratification at all academic levels and publishes collaboratively with students. Funded by the Russell Sage Foundation for her New York migrant attitudes study, she directs projects through CIDR and co-leads the Social Policy Preferences Network. Fluent in French, Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish.