Sharan Kaur Mehta
Visiting Scholar
Education
PhD in Sociology, Rice University, 2023
MA in Sociology, Rice University, 2019
BA in Chemistry, Bryn Mawr College, 2012
Research Interests
Race and Ethnicity, Racism, Racialization, Religion, Gender, Intersectionality, Asians and Asian Americans, Identity, Collective ActionResearch Statement:
Sharan Kaur Mehta (she/her/hers) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology & Criminology and the Institute for the Study on “Race” and Social Justice at the University of New Mexico. Her research advances diverse questions about social boundaries and inequalities through an intersectional and global lens with a focus on racial and (pan)ethnic formations, identity negotiations, and collective action among Asians and Asian Americans. Her work aims to make visible the lived and material impacts of racism on minoritized communities, structural mechanisms that (re)produce systemic inequalities, and how community members forge pathways for resistance.
As a Postdoctoral Fellow, Sharan is working with Dr. Nancy López on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsored project entitled, “Employing an Intersectionality Framework in Revising Office of Management and Budget Standards for Collecting Administrative Race and Ethnicity Data”. In addition, her first book project centers South Asians in Texas and explores (1) how religiously diverse South Asians (with a focus on Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus) perceive and negotiate their racial place in the US, (2) racialized boundaries within Asian America and the nexus between anti-Asian racism and Islamophobia, and (3) the challenges and opportunities of building solidarity within and beyond South Asian communities.
Recent/Select Publications:
Farrell, Allan, Raul S. Casarez, Xiaorui Zhang, and Sharan Kaur Mehta. 2022. “Message Received: Asian Americans’ Racial, Ethnic, and National Identity Centrality Before and After the 2016 Election.” Sociological Spectrum 42(2):135-155. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02732173.2022.2081894
Casarez, Raul S., Allan Farrell, Jenifer L. Bratter, Xiaorui Zhang, and Sharan Kaur Mehta. 2022. “Becoming (Asian) American? Inter-Ethnic Differences in Racial, Ethnic, and American Identities for Asian American Adults.” Ethnicities 22(3):347-373. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968221092769
Bratter, Jenifer, Raul Casarez, Allan Farrell, Sharan Kaur Mehta, Xiaorui Zhang, and Michael Carroll. 2022. “Counting Families, Counting Race: Assessing ‘Visible’ Family Structural Change among Multiracial Families, 1980 – 2018.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 31:609-622. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-022-02244-x
Mehta, Sharan Kaur, Rachel C. Schneider, and Elaine Howard Ecklund. 2022. “‘God Sees No Color’ So Why Should I? How White Christians Produce Divinized Colorblindness.” Sociological Inquiry 92(2):623-646. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soin.12476
Bratter, Jenifer, Allan Farrell, Sharan Kaur Mehta, Raul S. Casarez, Xiaorui Zhang, and Michael Carroll. 2022. “‘There’s something very wrong with the system in this country’: Multiracial Organizations and Their Responses to Racial Marginalization.” Social Sciences 11(5):226. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11050226
Chan, Esther, and Sharan Kaur Mehta. 2022. “Fertilizing Morality: How Religiosity and Orientations Towards Science Shape the Morality, Immorality, and Amorality of Reproductive Technologies.” Public Understanding of Science 31(4):376-393. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F09636625211035925
