Bonnie Siegler

I am a recent Ph.D. recipient in sociology at Columbia University. Starting on July 1, 2025, I will be a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute for Diversity Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

My research focuses on how organizations produce and attempt to reconcile racial inequality, and it lies at the intersection of sociology of race/ethnicity, organizational sociology, and sociology of education. I am particularly interested in the connection between ideas or beliefs about inequality and racism and organizational approaches to addressing inequality. My dissertation focuses on discourse of racial equity in educational organizations. I investigate school district commitments to racial equity in 2020. In other projects, I am also examine the experiences of DEI workers in K-12 public and private schools. In a set of related projects, I examine school choice and inequality, with projects focusing on the role of race and ideas about race and diversity in parent school preferences. 

My research has been published in Sociology of Education and Socius, as well as the Book Reviews section of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. As I am interested in discourse, beliefs, and attitude/behavior correlations, I use both qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews, survey experiments, and computational text analysis. 

Before beginning my graduate studies at Columbia, I completed a Bachelor's degree in Sociology at Princeton University (2013) and a Master's degree in teaching at Relay Graduate School of Education (2015). I am passionate about educational equity, and I have worked in education for more than a decade as a classroom teacher, curriculum writer, mentor, and tutor.

The photos below highlight some of my academic experiences. I am grateful for the community of students, scholars, and practitioners I get to join through this work!