Sean Lauer

Sean Lauer is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Arts. His research focuses on urban sociology, community studies, immigrant integration, and friendship dynamics through social infrastructure.

• Current SSHRC-funded projects explore friendship formation in community organizations
• Co-author of Neighbourhood Houses: Building Community in Vancouver (2021) with Miu Chung Yan
• Collaborator with Carrie Yodanis on marriage institutional analysis
• Key community-university partnerships including UBC Centre for Migration Studies

His work examines how cosmopolitan social infrastructure enables cross-ethnic friendships, with recent publications analyzing immigrant network diversity and community organization participation effects. Lauer's research combines longitudinal and treatment effects methodologies to address selection biases in social network studies.

As Community Liaison at UBC, he developed equitable collaborative research frameworks through UBC Centre for Migration Studies and established community advisory mechanisms for institutionalized community engagement.