Mary C. Waters

Mary C. Waters "is the M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. She specializes in the study of immigration, inter-group relations, the formation of racial and ethnic identity among the children of immigrants, and the challenges of measuring race and ethnicity...

"Her most current publications are Inheriting the City: The Second Generation Comes of Age (with Jennifer Holdaway, Philip Kasinitz, and John Mollenkopf), (Harvard University and Russell Sage Press, 2008); and The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration Since 1965 (with Reed Ueda and Helen Marrow), (Harvard University Press, 2007). She is also author of Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (Harvard University Press, 1999, paper ed. 2001). This book won five scholarly awards including the Mira Komarovsky Award of the Eastern Sociological Society, the Otis Dudley Duncan Award of the Population Section of the American Sociological Association, the Thomas and Znaniecki Award of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association, the Best Book Award of the Section on Race and Urban Politics of the American Political Science Association, and the Best Book Award of the Center for the Study of Inequality of Cornell University. Her other books include Becoming New Yorkers: Ethnographies of the New Second Generation (co-edited with Phillip Kasinitz and John Mollenkopf) (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2004), Social Inequalities in Comparative Perspective co-edited with Fiona Devine) (Blackwell Press, 2004), The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals (co-edited with Joel Perlmann) (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2002, paper 2005), The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation (co-edited with Peggy Levitt) (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2002), Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (University of California Press, 1990) and From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups in Contemporary America (with Stanley Lieberson) (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 1988). She is also the author of over 40 articles and chapters on racial and ethnic identity and immigrant assimilation. return to top

"Waters’ work has been supported by the Russell Sage, Rockefeller, Ford, Mellon, W.T. Grant, and MacArthur Foundations as well as by the Foundation for Child Development and the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was elected to membership in the Sociological Research Association in 1993...

"Waters has testified twice before congress on how the census should measure racial and ethnic identity. She served on the Advisory Board to the U.S. Census as a representative of the Population Association of America from 1999-2005, she has served as a member of the study section of the National Institute of Child Health and Development, and has served as a member of the Committee on the Impact of International Migration of the National Academy of Science, and as a consultant to the Census Bureau. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation, an elected member of the Board of Directors of the Population Association of America, and is a member of the International Migration Committee and the Research on Katrina Advisory Committee of the Social Science Research Council. Since 2001 she has been a member of the MacArthur Network on the Transition to Adulthood. She has held numerous elected offices and served on committees of the American Sociological Association and the Eastern Sociological Society. She is currently on the editorial boards of six publications, including the Annual Review of Sociology."