
Name: João M. Souto Maior
Email: jms1738@nyu.edu
Program: Sociology of Education
Research Interests: organizations; education policy, racial inequalities; computational methods.
Principal Advisor: R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy.
Research Description/Bio:
I am a fifth-year doctoral student in the sociology of education program. In my research, I rely on innovative methodological approaches---such as qualitatively informed agent-based models and machine learning techniques---to re-examining “old” questions in education research. Doing so, I hope to improve the quality of evidence on questions of great relevance to education policy and practice. I am particularly interested in questions related to the organization of educational institutions and how organizational decisions impact the formation of educational inequalities. During my doctoral studies, I have concentrated on questions concerning the emergence of educational inequalities---defined as access to advanced coursework---between Black and White students who attend the same school.
I am originally from São Paulo, Brazil. I received a BA in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017. After my undergraduate studies, I started as an economics doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he studied for one year before transferring to NYU.
Selected Publications, Awards, and Presentations:
Academic Publications:
Joao Souto-Maior (2023). “The presence of White students and the emergence of Black-White within-school inequalities: two interaction-based mechanisms.” arXiv preprint available [here].
Joao Souto-Maior & Ravi Shroff (2023). “Adjusting for academic preparedness when estimating enrollment disparities in advanced high school coursework.” arXiv preprint available [here].
Award
2023 NYU Steinhardt Dissertation Finishing Award.
Presentation
Joao Souto-Maior (2023). “Unpacking the emergence of opportunity hoarding: an agent-based model of Black-White educational disparities within schools.” Annual Conference of the International Network of Analytical Sociologists.