Kristen McNeill, Doctoral Candidate in Sociology

Kristen is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. Her research interests are at the intersection of social inequalities, micro-level economic behaviors, and international development. Her dissertation examines how ostensibly gender-neutral processes governing access to resources can be profoundly gendered in practice. Using a combination of large-scale administrative data, qualitative data, and text data, she investigates how loan officers at a microcredit bank in Colombia evaluate the creditworthiness of potential borrowers, and how this process is gendered. As a doctoral student, she has also studied the drivers of financial preferences among low-income Colombians, and how predominantly female factory workers in Côte d’Ivoire retain or lose control of their earnings in the face of financial pressure from their social networks.

Kristen’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Brown University Graduate School, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the Population Studies and Training Center, and the Brown Business, Entrepreneurship, and Organizations Program. Her prior work has appeared in American Sociological Review as well as a number of policy-oriented journals.

Selected publications:

Peer-reviewed articles

Doering, Laura and Kristen McNeill. 2020. “Elaborating on the Abstract: Group Meaning-Making in a Colombian Microsavings Program.” American Sociological Review 83(3): 417-450.
Heymann, Jody, Kristen McNeill, and Amy Raub. 2015. “Rights Monitoring and Assessment using Quantitative Indicators of Law and Policy: ICESCR.” Human Rights Quarterly 37: 1071-1100.
Heymann, Jody, Kristen McNeill, and Amy Raub. 2014. “Assessing Compliance with the CRC: Indicators of Law and Policy in 191 Countries.” International Journal of Children’s Rights 22: 425-445.
Heymann, Jody, Alison Earle, and Kristen McNeill. 2013. “The Impact of Labor Policies on the Health of Young Children in the Context of Economic Globalization.” Annual Review of Public Health 34: 355-372.
Rodin, Danielle, Kristen McNeill, Norma Vite-León, and Jody Heymann. 2012. “Determinants of Informal Employment among Working Mothers in Mexico.” Community, Work & Family 15: 85-99.
Under review

McNeill, Kristen and Rachael Pierotti. “Reason-Giving for Resistance: Relational Work and Obfuscation in Informal Financial Assistance.” (Revise & resubmit at Socio-Economic Review.)
Recent awards:

Doctoral Research Improvement Award – Sociology, National Science Foundation (2020-2021)
Hazeltine Entrepreneurial Research Fellowship, Brown University (2019-2020)
Doctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2017-2020)
Presidential Fellowship, Brown University (2015-2018)