UW Sociology is delighted to announce that Sasha Shen Johfre will join us and CSSS as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2023. Currently a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Stanford University, her research focuses on the social construction of social knowledge, including the ways that ideas of human difference (e.g. based on gender, race, or age) are made to be seen as real and essential. Sasha’s past research has examined the role of genetic ancestry tests in the way that Americans self-identify their race on demographic surveys, the extent to which first names tend to signal age, race, gender, and class category membership, how to reduce structural barriers to meaningful mixed-age relationships, and the most responsible ways for social science researchers to use reference categories in quantitative modeling.