News

Annette Nierobisz, Ada M. Harrison Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Carleton, was featured in the Carleton News for a Q&A about her and co-author Dana Sawchuk’s book American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era. The book explores findings from interviews with 62 mostly white-collar workers who experienced late-career job loss in the wake of the Great Recession.

Cheryl Yin, assistant professor of anthropology at Carleton, presented a five-minute lightning talk titled, “Cutting Family Ties: Disownment Announcements in Cambodia” on at the 2025 Society for Linguistic Anthropology Conference. Occasionally, Cambodians will publicly disown family members in newspaper ads and on social media. Yin shared preliminary data on her research, hypothesizing that announcements prevent the spread of shame, debt, and other responsibilities within the family.

Cheryl Yin, assistant professor of anthropology at Carleton, has been selected as a Mellon Periclean Faculty Leader. Support from Project Pericles will allow Yin to redesign the course “Southeast Asian Migration and Diasporic Communities” to center the voices of Cambodian elders through the collection and preservation of oral history interviews. The revised course will provide Carleton students with the opportunity to learn from Cambodian refugees who have resettled in Minnesota and to explore ways to address and advocate for the needs of the Cambodian American community.

SOAN and ENTS major Julianna Baldo ’25 was featured in the 2025 Sustainability Office newsletter for being a recipient of the Stewsie Sustainability Award, which recognizes one Carleton student and one staff member who have made a notable impact on sustainability efforts at Carleton. Julianna was recognized for her “remarkable dedication to environmental activism, education, and community engagement throughout her time at Carleton.”

SOAN major Victoria Semmelhack ’25 was among three Carleton students awarded the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which supports graduating seniors during a year of independent exploration outside of the United States. The fellowship allows for deep, global engagement of a personal interest. Semmelhack will travel to Ghana, India, Australia, and Norway to explore childbirth knowledge and maternal healthcare policy.

Annette Nierobisz, Ada M. Harrison Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Carleton, published a new book titled American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era, now available from Rutgers University Press. The book explores the challenges faced by older white-collar workers navigating job loss in a recessionary economy marked by employer preference for younger workers.

Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Broom Professor of Social Demography and Anthropology at Carleton, was featured in the Carleton News for her long-running ACE course Anthropology of Health and Illness, which she has been teaching for over 20 years.

SOAN major and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow Juan Garcia Reyes ’26 has been accepted into the 2025 American Sociological Association (ASA) Honors Program. This program introduces exceptional undergraduate sociology students to the professional life of the discipline through participation in special activities at the ASA Annual Meeting.

Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Broom Professor of Social Demography and Anthropology at Carleton, published a research article in Ethos, the journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, titled “Contesting parenting expertise: Constructing good mothering and searching for dignity in Cameroonian Berlin.”

Cheryl Yin, assistant professor of anthropology at Carleton, was a discussant for the panel “Cambodia in the World: Khmer Encounters with Others” at the Association of Asian Studies annual conference in Columbus, Ohio on March 15. Yin was also invited to be part of the Thailand Laos Cambodia (TLC) Studies Group‘s “New Research and Emerging Voices Roundtable,” where she was one of four junior scholars who shared their research with the wider community of TLC scholars at the conference.