Darwin Baluran

Darwin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology. His research examines how processes of racialization pattern life outcomes and life trajectories in ways that harm marginalized peoples. An overarching focus of his research is to address the disconnect between social scientists’ conceptualization of race as a dynamic social construct and how it is often examined and interpreted in research as a static variable. His work is motivated by three broad questions: 1.) How do individuals’ and groups’ understanding of racial/ethnic boundaries vary and shift across spatial and temporal contexts? 2.) How do the processes that shape our understanding of racial and ethnic boundaries produce and reproduce inequality at the micro to the macro levels? 3.) How do we uncover the hidden inequalities in various outcomes, from health disparities to interactions with the law, that are often obscured by the ways in which we differentiate and/or homogenize people? He addresses these questions by engaging the literatures from the following substantive areas: demography; health/medical sociology; race, ethnicity, and immigration; and criminology, law, and society. He also approaches these questions by drawing on his extensive training in statistical analysis, qualitative methods, and formal demographic techniques. Altogether, his research offers insight into how racialization and racism are understood and experienced across place and over time, particularly by individuals and groups who remain understudied, including people of Asian descent.