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Bear Beginnings: Faculty Spotlight with Prof. Darwin Baluran

Faculty Spotlights feature presentations by faculty members, given on disciplinary and departmental areas of interest and expertise. During this event, we will provide a sneak peek of the classroom atmosphere, introduce key ideas central to the study of Sociology, and feature faculty work currently being done in our department.

As a part of the broader Bear Beginnings programming, the WashU Department of Sociology invites first-year and transfer student to attend our Faculty Spotlight session, featuring Prof. Darwin Baluran presenting a talk titled "How Racism Makes Us Sick: The Link between Social Factors and Mental and Physical Health." We strongly encourage students who are interested in pre-medical programs, public health, data science, social work, political science, studies of race and ethnicity, community organization and advocacy, law, social justice and activism, critical thinking and social theory, and civic engagement to attend this presentation. If you don't know what sociology is and what it is all about, this is a fantastic, low-stakes opportunity to learn - even before the semester starts. 

So many of our students wish that they had discovered sociology earlier in their college careers... Get a head start through this Faculty Spotlight presentation!

Professor Baluran’s research aims to theoretically unpack and empirically analyze how racialization and racism differentially harm marginalized communities. He utilizes a variety of methods, from formal demography to in-depth interviews, to uncover mechanisms that reproduce racial inequality across various domains of social life, from criminal legal contact to health. He currently focuses on three streams of research: (1) race and criminal legal outcomes; (2) the health impacts of racialization and racism; and (3) the intersection of racialization, criminal legal contact and health. His work has been published in Demography, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, The British Journal of Criminology, Population Research and Policy Review, among others.

Location: Brown Hall, Room 100

Questions prior to the event? Or, just want to get a head start in exploring the possibilities that WashU Sociology can present? Check out our website or contact our Academic Coordinator!