Chantal Hailey

Chantal Hailey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research is at the intersections of race and ethnicity, stratification, urban sociology, education, and criminology. She is particularly interested in how micro decision-making contributes to larger macro segregation and stratification patterns and how racism creates, sustains, and exacerbates racial, educational, and socioeconomic inequality. To understand these processes, she employs a range of methodologies, from quantitative analysis of administrative and survey data to qualitative interviews and experiments.

Her study, Choosing Schools, Choosing Safety, uses the New York City High School Admissions Process as a case study to understand individual choices and stratification in education. Employing experimental and quantitative methods, Choosing Schools, Choosing Safety demonstrates how heuristics and racialized perceptions of safety induce families’ divergent choices schools by their associated racial demographics and, ultimately, influence racial segregation.

Dr. Hailey’s other research projects examine how spatially- and racially-concentrated practices and events, such as Stop, Question, and Frisk and the foreclosure crisis, affect educational outcomes. This work has been published in Sociology of Education, Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Different components of her research have been generously funded by the National Science Foundation, Institute for Education Sciences, Ford Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and William T. Grant Foundation.

Before beginning her doctoral studies, Chantal was a Research Associate at The Urban Institute, where her research centered on youth and low-income housing policies. Chantal received her B.A. in Sociology from Howard University and a PhD in Sociology from New York University.