Hajar Yazdiha, PhD

Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute, and former postdoctoral fellow of the USC Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Hajar’s research examines the mechanisms underlying the racialized politics of inclusion and exclusion. This work intersects subfields of race and ethnicity, immigration, social movements, culture, and law using mixed methods including interview, survey, historical, and computational text analysis. This research takes shape through three interrelated streams of inquiry: the first explores how intergroup boundaries and ethno-racial identities are constituted through macro-structures like laws, policies, and media. A second strand examines the consequences of these ethno-racial projects for collective behavior, collective action, and immigrant incorporation. A third strand examines how these ethno-racial projects get embodied and shape mental and physical health. This body of research works to trace how systems of inequality are reproduced and examine how everyday actors develop strategies to resist, contest, and create social change.