Current Fellows (2026-27)
Eylem Taylan
Eylem Taylan is a Ph.D Student in Sociology.
This research investigates how organized labor embedded in domestic political fields shapes great power shifts in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. Divergent perspectives on the implications of China’s development for the US-led neoliberal globalization project show the continuing relevance of the questions of 1) whether we are currently witnessing the definitive crisis of neoliberalism and, 2) what comes next for the capitalist world economy. This research contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate through the lens of labor struggles ensued by the Chinese state-owned enterprise COSCO’s management of Piraeus port in Greece. In doing so, it foregrounds another, relatively underexplored research question: How and to what extent are anti-systemic movements giving direction to the crisis of neoliberalization? The privatization process at Piraeus port is significant not only as a case of deepening marketization and austerity measures but also as a prominent site for analyzing the political consequences of the increasing state-oriented capitalist investments in critical infrastructure amidst hegemonic clashes between the US and emerging powers following the 2008 crisis. In order to offer a politics-centered perspective on such coarticulations of state-oriented and market-oriented capitalist projects as the one playing out in Piraeus today, I combine the world-system analysis of the prospects of an alternative development path for the crisis-ridden capitalist world economy with field-theoretical approaches to the trajectory of movements resisting neoliberalization.
Natalie Pasquinelli
Natalie Pasquinelli is a Ph.D. Student in Sociology.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic first forced numerous jobs into private homes, remote and hybrid work have persisted as “family friendly” arrangements for parents, said to ease the competing demands of work and family. Indeed, the vast majority of hybrid and remote workers say being able to work from home improves their “work-life balance.” But while parents feel less conflict, remote work is associated with overwork, thinking more about work when not at work, and the sense that one is working all the time and everywhere. Further, remote work may “solve” the problem of work-home conflict by reinforcing a traditional gender division of labor, expanding women’s hours spent on unpaid work while expanding men’s hours spent on paid work. At the same time, “work-life balance” in middle- and upper-class families has long relied on the labor of paid domestic workers, yet an account of paid domestic work is strikingly missing from studies of remote work. Remote work thus presents a series of puzzles: How is it that working from home leads to an improved sense of work-life balance for parents, while intensifying overwork and gender inequality in the family? And how does remote work in turn shape the labor conditions of paid domestic workers employed by these households? My research cluster will focus on the effect of remote work on domestic workers. Undergraduate scholars will learn about and engage in all phases of original interview-based research, including designing an interview protocol, conducting interviews, transcribing and coding interviews, and analyzing interview data.