Aliyah Abu-Hazeem

Aliyah is a current second-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. She is a graduate student affiliate of the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity as well as the Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights. Prior to joining the Department of Sociology, Aliyah obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College in Sociology (with High Honors) and Law & Society with minors in Africana Studies and Politics. At Oberlin College, Aliyah was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow, a Posse Scholar, a Greenhouse Scholar, and Senior Class President among many other leadership roles. Presently, Aliyah is a Research Assistant for Professor of Sociology, Kraig Beyerlein, which has afforded her the opportunity to assist with the collection and analysis of innovative data on the national Women’s March (2017-present) as well as co-author a publication on their findings (Mobilization, forthcoming January 2019).

Currently, Aliyah is working on her master’s thesis, which she will obtain along the way to the PhD in Sociology. Her thesis is concerned with tackling a longstanding sociological debate on whether schools still serve as the great equalizer for young, Black boys from urban, impoverished communities of color using an all-boys high school on the South Side of Chicago as a case study. At the heart of this project, Aliyah is interested in exploring how racialized narratives of hypermasculinity, if present within the learning environments of young, Black men, impact their path(s) to mobility both in and outside of school contexts as well as their perception of the utility of educational attainment on improving their life chances.

Beyond this current project, Aliyah’s research interests include, race and ethnicity, racism, race and feminist theory, crime and criminality, deviance, and social disorder, urban institutions, especially schools and neighborhoods, mass incarceration, poverty, and inequality. As a scholar of race and urban studies in training, Aliyah looks forward to opportunities that will nurture her preparation for the professoriate as well as allow her to network with a broad collectivity of scholars both in and outside of Sociology, which will allow her to stay abreast to present and ongoing debates through an interdisciplinary and multi-methodological lens.