Bio
Marissa Thompson is an Assistant Professor of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2021 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan before joining the department in 2022. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of racial and socioeconomic inequality, with an emphasis on understanding the role of education in shaping disparate outcomes over the life-course. Marissa’s current research investigates, for example, parental preferences regarding school segregation, the causal effects of first-dollar scholarship policies on college access, and the role of genetic ancestry tests in racial boundary-making processes. She employs both descriptive and quasi-experimental quantitative methods using large national datasets, administrative data, and novel survey experiments.