Alumna Returns as IPR’s Inaugural Visiting Scholar
Alumna Stefanie DeLuca (PhD02), a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and one of the nation’s leading experts on housing mobility, vouchers and policy, will join Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research as its inaugural visiting scholar in May 2025.
DeLuca directs the Poverty and Inequality Research Lab at Johns Hopkins and works with economist Raj Chetty as a research principal at Harvard’s Opportunity Insights, a research and policy institute that uses big data to study economic opportunity.
At Northwestern, DeLuca worked with School of Education and Social Policy professor James Rosenbaum, an IPR fellow, and former SESP faculty member and IPR economist Greg Duncan on seminal studies of the Gautreaux and Moving to Opportunity housing programs.
“The support and training I received as an IPR fellow and human development and social policy doctoral student uniquely shaped me as a scholar who can design rigorous, policy-relevant research informed by the challenges people face in their everyday lives,” DeLuca said.
Years later, she said, she can see how her training shaped a career-long research agenda at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary and mixed-methods policy science.
“I am eager to continue the tradition of learning from IPR faculty fellows and students and also share insights about how mixed-methods research can translate into policy change,” she said.
From May 12 to May 16 on Northwestern’s Evanston campus, DeLuca will meet with faculty and students, sharing her research and ideas on how to convey research findings to a general audience.
She will also explore potential collaborations with faculty and present some of her latest findings on Monday, May 12, from noon to 1 p.m.