Image
Loading...
Social policy has the power to change lives. Throughout March 2026 month, Sanford is highlighting the exceptional research, teaching, service, and student experiences that define our school in support of the broad umbrella of social policy. From food security, education and childcare to income inequality and housing, Sanford is a world leader in shaping and evaluating policies that improve the lives of people at all ages around the world.
Social Policy & STEM
The L.I.F.T Lab is a unique interdisciplinary partnership between the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy at the Sanford School and the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering. L.I.F.T., which stands for Learning Innovations and Future Technologies, began in 2022 with a mission rooted in three interconnected pillars: creating, implementing, and studying innovations in STEM education.
L.I.F.T. team members Karis Boyd-Sinkler, PhD, Dr. Shaundra Daily, Whitney McCoy Hudson, PhD, and Sandra Roach discuss the lab's programs, community-engaged research and impact.
Social Policy & Crime
Image
“There is no amount of crime data that can tell us how people in communities make decisions on a day-to-day basis about whether to commit crimes or whether to stay crime free … In order to understand the full range of possibilities for people in these spaces, we need to ask them about their experiences and listen closely to their stories. This allows us to understand fully, not just the what and where of a phenomenon, but the how and the why.”
Dr. CJ Appleton recently shared how he uses narrative techniques to examine individuals' life stories in his research on desistance—the long-term process of stopping criminal behavior. His talk was part of Duke Sanford’s Equity in Research Learning Collaborative, highlighting the school’s commitment to advancing social policy research and creating meaningful opportunities for faculty mentorship and collaboration.
Policy 360 Podcast
Reforming Criminal Reform
CJ Appleton's professional focus is on desistance, the process of ending a criminal career.
Image
Social Policy & Teacher Training
New research finds that teachers’ earliest classroom experiences may shape how they evaluate students for years to come. Using data from North Carolina public schools, Professor Marcos Rangel and coauthor Ying Shi show that teachers rate Black students lower than white classmates with the same standardized test scores. The study also finds that patterns teachers encounter in their first year in the classroom can influence their evaluations long into their careers.
The findings point to the importance of support and training for teachers at the start of their careers.
Image
Social Policy & Undergraduate Research
At Duke Sanford, the public policy undergraduate honors thesis is a year-long intensive research experience where students conduct original research and become experts on a topic under the guidance of a faculty member. As part of our month-long focus on social policy, we're highlighting the work of four seniors who were nominated by faculty members for our spotlight on undergraduate social policy research.
Kate Seneshen conducted a cross-sectional investigation of the knowledge, attitudes and practices of secondary school students regarding HPV and related diseases in Urubamba, Cusco. She is using the insights from her thesis research and other fieldwork to co-launch a global health student research training program through which four Duke undergraduates will spend the summer in Urubamba, co-designing sexual health interventions.
Willow Kaplan investigated whether the widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work after the outbreak of COVID-19 reduced employment and income disparities faced by mothers. Using nationally representative data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, she found that mothers remain less likely to work full-time than comparable non-mothers.
Samantha Richter examined the political, administrative and community-level barriers to implementing small-scale detention centers across Europe, drawing on the work of an advocacy organization operating across 17 countries. Through visits to seven detention houses and 24 interviews with policymakers, prison administrators and advocates, she investigated what makes these models work and how their lessons might inform broader criminal justice reform.
Gabrielle Mollin reviewed the relationship between the degree of centralization in history education and a nation’s politics of memory using a structured case comparison of Germany, Japan, England and the U.S. She developed two original tools—an Education Centralization Index and a Historical Memory Rubric—to systematically analyze each studied country’s acknowledgment of historical wrongdoing.
Learn more about these students' experience writing an honors thesis.
Image
Social Policy, early life & inequalities in adulthood
Shuyi Qiu is a student in Duke’s joint Public Policy and Sociology PhD program. Her research is grounded in the idea that inequalities in adulthood can be traced back to earlier stages of life, shaped jointly by macro, meso and micro contexts, including family resources, neighborhood conditions and the policy environments people grow up in.
In this Q&A, she discusses what drew her to Sanford, how her interdisciplinary lens shapes her research, and how she hopes her work will inform both scholarship and policy
Image
social policy & marriage age
Duke Sanford PhD candidate Kevin Kamto Sonke is investigating how civil registration systems and age-at-marriage laws shape women’s educational, marital and fertility outcomes.
In this Q&A, he discusses his interest in examining both the benefits and trade-offs of government intervention, as well as his research on how regulations can interfere with customary norms and the law:
Image
social policy & supporting families
With a research focus on evaluating programs and policies that support children and families, Gayane A. Baziyants is interested in understanding not just whether policies work, but how and why they succeed in practice.
In this Q&A, the PhD candidate shares what led her to pursue a PhD at Duke, her research focus, and her goal to expand the field of knowledge in child and family policy to better inform strategies for supporting families and communities:
Image
Social Policy & Immigration
New research from Duke Sanford’s Hannah Postel, PhD examines how more than a century of U.S. immigration law and foreign policy shaped Asian immigration and continues to influence community formation and economic outcomes today.
In the latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Prof. Postel traces three major eras, from exclusion and citizenship bans to the sweeping reforms of 1965 that transformed immigration flows.
One key takeaway: there is no single Asian American experience. Policy decisions shaped who could enter, under what conditions, and with what opportunities.
Read more about her research.
Image
social policy & Parenting
What can we learn about parenting across cultures—and across nearly two decades? Launched in 2008, the Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) longitudinal study offers rare insight into how biological, cultural and family processes shape child development, self-regulation and risk-taking over time.
"Our study has also allowed us to see how parents and children mutually influence each other – that parenting isn’t only in one direction," research scientist Ann T. Skinner says. "Children’s behavior also elicits different types of parenting and affects parents’ well-being.”
Image
Podcast: Social Policy & Housing
Every year, 250 million Americans face issues that land them in the civil justice system; think eviction, debt collection and poor housing. And here's a shocking number: more than 90% of people with low incomes either get no legal help or inadequate legal assistance. In the latest episode of Duke Sanford's Policy 360 podcast, Professor Mallory SoRelle explores the themes in her new book "Uncivil Democracy: How Access to Justice Shapes Political Power." The book is filled with true stories from tenants and analysis about how to harness power, politics, and justice to create effective public policy for all.
The episode, titled "Power to the Renters: Tenant’s Rights in a Landlord's World," is hosted by Anna Gassman-Pines and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music.
Image
What is social policy?
Duke Sanford professors Norbert Wilson, Christina Gibson-Davis & Jennifer Lansford help explain.
Watch the kickoff reel on Instagram.