A sociologist and a political scientist have been named 2017 recipients of research awards from the UCI School of Social Sciences. Each honor carries a $5,000 prize.

Julia C. Lerch, sociology, is the Social Sciences Assistant Professor Research Award recipient. Established in 2005, the honor recognizes research excellence accompanied by a strong project proposal from a junior faculty member in social sciences. 

Lerch looks at international education issues from a sociological perspective, with a focus on refugees, humanitarian emergencies, and globalization. Her funded work will examine how recently arrived refugee youth in Orange County schools are making sense of their civic identity and its relationship to education throughout their migration pathways. She’ll also be looking at how these conceptions evolve as refugees settle into their new homes and schools in the U.S. Broadly, her findings will help researchers understand how unique global trajectories of continuously re-imagined homes and futures can shape post-settlement integration. Lerch joined the UCI faculty in fall 2017 after completing her Ph.D. at Stanford.

Sara Wallace Goodman, political science, is the recipient of the Social Sciences Associate Professor Research Award. The award was established in 2011-12 to recognize research excellence and project proposals by newly tenured faculty in social sciences.

Goodman specializes in citizenship politics of Western European countries and the U.S., focusing on immigrant integration, national identity and immigration policymaking. Her winning research proposal focuses on the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe. She’ll be working to explain – from a comparative and policy perspective – what top-level European Union and individual member state failures led to the crisis. Funding provided by the research award will support her travels to Europe for in-person research. Goodman joined the UCI faculty in 2009, following a six-month postdoctoral fellowship at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. She received her Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University.