Research Agenda
Loren studies how institutions organize care: who receives it, how it is provided, and when it is withdrawn.
↳ They use quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how these institutional arrangements – and the policy contexts that structure them – shape child and family well-being.
↳ Their research contributes to debates on institutional responsibility and precarity, the tension between surveillance and support, and the stratifying consequences of contemporary care infrastructures.
Current Projects
The delegated welfare state grows conditional even as it expands access for select groups. Yet eligible recipients – like youth aging out of child welfare – rarely receive these supports. Drawing on 18 months of Chicago-based fieldwork, this project argues that workforce instability undercuts receipt while sustaining surveillance, pushing youth back toward state-severed family ties.
Funding: National Science Foundation and Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy
The termination of parental rights (TPR) – the legal severing of parent-child bonds – is one of the most punitive forms of state interventions into family life. Leveraging over 10 years of linked administrative data, this study shows that carceral policy contexts amplify TPR rates, particularly for fathers of color.
Award: Best Graduate Paper, Sociology and Social Welfare Division, SSSP
Team ethnography is a collective approach to fieldwork that remains undertheorized despite its potential. This manuscript draws on a multi-site study on youth suicide to identify the method's strengths and limitations.
Collaborators: Social Worlds & Youth Wellbeing Study, Dr. Anna Mueller, Indiana University – Bloomington
Publications
Related Public Scholarship
Image credits: Mike McQuade; Stephen Tourlentes; Khalili, Lara Khaldi, and Marwa Arsanios