The John Mohr Dissertation Improvement Grant awards $1,000 each to two racially or ethnically under-represented graduate student at a public institution studying any topic.  The recipient must be a member of the Sociology of Culture section.

This grant recognizes that scholars of color, especially graduate students, have been historically, systematically disadvantaged in academia and uses a commitment of material resources to acknowledge this harm and offer a small means of redress going forward.   

Criteria for the award will be based on graduate student standing, merit, and need. Application materials include a CV, a dissertation abstract, an explanation as to how the grant will be used to expand your research beyond existing resources, and a brief explanation of your identity as a member of a racially or ethnically underrepresented group. 

Please submit your application using this online form.    

COMMITTEE 
Nino Bariola (Chair), nino.bariola@utoronto.ca
Jyoti Puri, puri@bu.edu
Casandra Salgado, casandrasalgado@asu.edu

Applications are due February 15th, 2025.  Notifications will be sent in advance of ASA. 

2024/2025 Awards

Winner: 
Şeyma Özdemir
UCSB

Honorable Mention:
Kristen Miller
CUNY

Honorable Mention:
Yucheng Liu
UCSB

How to make a donation  

People interested in donating to the grant can log into their ASA profiles and then make an online donation on the ASA website at this link. Please simultaneously email the section’s COO (mmlo@ucdavis.edu) to alert them of the donation to make sure it is correctly earmarked for the award.

If you prefer to use a personal check sent to ASA, it should be accompanied by a cover letter identifying the section and purpose of the funds (i.e. it should clearly state that the funds are intended for the Sociology of Culture section’s John Mohr Dissertation Improvement Grant).  

The ASA’s address for this purpose is the following:  

American Sociological Association
c/o Governance Department
1717 K St NW, Ste 900
Washington DC 20006

Please simultaneously also email the section’s COO (mmlo@ucdavis.edu) to alert them of the donation. Upon receiving the funds, the section’s secretary will then earmark them for the grant and coordinate with the John Mohr Grant Committee the allocation and distribution of the funds.  The current donors that fund the John Mohr Award donate yearly. Donors can, of course, choose to donate year by year or to do so just once. If you plan to donate yearly, we request that you communicate to the COO expressing your interest in this regard. The secretary would then reach out to you each year (in September) to remind you about your donation.  

About John Mohr

John Mohr pioneered cultural research on meaning and measurement in sociology, focusing on institutional processes of meaning-making on topics ranging from poverty relief to institutional diversity initiatives. He spent his career at the University of California – Santa Barbara, and at different times served as Chair of the Culture Section and the Theory Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Behind the scenes, in a variety of roles, he dedicated his time and resources to diversity and equity initiatives. He died in 2019 of complications due to ALS.  As an incredibly supportive mentor and a brilliant scholar, John Mohr left a substantive mark on an entire generation of cultural sociologists. Testaments of his immense influence in the field are the collective book Measuring Culture (Columbia University Press) and the special issue of Poetics co-edited by two of Mohr’s advisees.   

Prior Winners

2023/2024 

Zaoying (Cherry) Ji, UC Irvine
Dissertation Title: “The Global Rise of Women in Higher Education: Divergent Pathways and Global Discursive Changes, 1960-2020.” 

Evangelina Warren, Ohio State
Dissertation Title: “Understanding the Effects of Proximity to Whiteness”

2022/2023

Jeung Hyun Kim, Syracuse University
Dissertation Title: “Multiculturalism and the Wellbeing of Older U.S. Immigrants.”

Yingjian Liang, Indiana University, 
Dissertation Title: “Networks, Culture, and the Job Search Process: A Longitudinal Interview Study of STEM Graduate Students”

2021/2022

Maia Behrendt, University of Nebrasksa 
Dissertation title: Creating Community and Dismantling Settler Colonialism Through Art: Indigenous Women Artists.”

Edwin Grimsley, CUNY
Dissertation title: “The Differential Marijuana Effect: The (Uneven) Historical Development of National and State Marijuana Possession Laws.”