The Upjohn Institute has named four doctoral students to receive its 2025 Dissertation Research Grants. The grants now provide up to $15,000 to support students at U.S. institutions who have completed all doctoral program requirements except for their dissertations.
This slate of awards marks the third year of the Dissertation Resarch Grants program. Consistent with the Upjohn Institute mission of finding solutions to employment problems and its commitment to encouraging diversity in research, the awards support research on employment-related topics, with particular interest in policy-relevant research pertaining to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.
Grants can help researchers pay for expenses such as acquiring or gaining access to data and research assistance. Grantees may be invited to present their research at the Upjohn Institute. They may also submit a working paper to be considered for inclusion in the institute’s working paper series and develop a policy brief to communicate research implications to a policy audience.
The Upjohn Institute presents the awards in partnership with the Russell Sage Foundation. The 2025 grantees are:
Charlotte O’Herron, Harvard University
Gonzalo Respighi Grasso, University of California, Santa Cruz
Clinton Rooker, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Duan Zhang, University of Missouri
Details on grantees’ dissertation research topics:
Charlotte O’Herron, Harvard University
This sociology and social policy Ph.D. student aims to illuminate “hidden hands of hiring” by measuring hiring bias and the forms it takes in alternative work organizations as compared to traditional employment contexts. The research will examine differences in how two sets of U.S. firms, standard employers versus temporary help agencies and subcontractors, treat various job applications.
Gonzalo Respighi Grasso, University of California, Santa Cruz
This economics Ph.D. student will examine how rent control policies affect households’ financial behaviors, with a particular focus on their implications for racial minorities and low-income households, who are disproportionately burdened by housing costs. The research will explore how rent control policies influence households’ ability or decision to move in response to job opportunities.
Clinton Rooker, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This political science Ph.D. student aims to better understand the values, identities and meaning-making processes of working-class men. Rooker has worked and engaged in participant observation research at a mid-sized construction company in southeastern Wisconsin. He proposes to conduct in-depth interviews with co-workers to probe, refine, and challenge the data already collected in the field.
Duan Zhang, University of Missouri
This economics Ph.D. dissertation will study the effect of job loss on individuals’ crime outcomes and the crime outcomes of their family members. The project will link employment and earnings administrative data at the individual level to administrative criminal justice records and several other sources. It will use mass layoff and plant closure events as plausibly exogenous unemployment shocks to individuals.