Alex Chow
Stanford, US
alexwjchow@stanford.edu
https://alexwjchow.com
AlexChow

Experience

Graduate Research Assistant
January 2020
 — 
Present
Stanford University

Research roles in sociology and poverty/inequality labs.

  • Jun 2025 – Present: Voices Lab: "American Voices Project." Research Assistant for Dr. David Grusky, Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
  • Mar 2023 – Present: Social Networks Lab: "Social Networks and Cellphone Mobility Data." Lab Coordinator and Research Assistant for Dr. David Grusky, Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
  • Sep 2022 – May 2023: "COVID and Infant Health." Research Assistant for Dr. Florencia Torche, Stanford Department of Sociology.
Undergraduate Research Assistant
January 2016
 — 
January 2020
University of British Columbia

Research experience in sociology and data science labs.

  • May 2018 – May 2021: "Intergenerational Educational Mobility Over the Past Century in Canada." Co-Investigator with Dr. Neil Guppy, UBC Department of Sociology.
  • May 2019 – Dec 2019: "Developing Natural Language Processing Tools for Sharing of Indigenous and Community Knowledge." Data Science for Social Good Research Fellow, National Energy Board & UBC Data Science Institute.
  • May 2019 – Dec 2019: "Romantic Relationships in Canada." Research Assistant for Dr. Yue Qian, UBC Department of Sociology.
Graduate Teaching Assistant
January 2020
 — 
January 2025
Stanford University

Graduate teaching, mentorship, and supervision roles.

  • Nov 2024 – Aug 2025: Graduate Research Assistant Internship Supervisor, Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences Research Experience Program
  • Jun 2021 – Aug 2021: Graduate Research Mentor, Stanford Summer Research Early Identification Program
  • Jan 2023 – Mar 2023: Graduate Teaching Assistant, SOC 382: Sociological Methodology II (Statistics for an Open Science: Principles of Regression II)
  • Sep 2022 – Dec 2022: Graduate Teaching Assistant, SOC 381: Sociological Methodology I (Introduction)
  • Sep 2021 – Dec 2021: Graduate Teaching Assistant, SOC 114/214: Economic Sociology
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant
January 2016
 — 
January 2020
University of British Columbia

Undergraduate teaching assistantships and mentorship roles.

  • May 2020 – Jun 2020: Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, ANTH/SOCI 480: Urban Ethnographic Field School
  • Jan 2020 – Apr 2020: Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, SOCI 372: Contemporary Directions in Theory
  • Sep 2019 – Apr 2020: Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, DSCI 100: Introduction to Data Science
  • Sep 2019 – Dec 2019: Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, SOCI 301: Development and Underdevelopment
  • Sep 2018 – May 2019: Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, SOCI 100: Introduction to Sociology
  • Sep 2019 – Apr 2020: Student Directed Seminar Leader and Coordinator, SOCI 433: Scaling the Ivory Tower: Sociology of Higher Education
  • Oct 2019: Workshop Leader and Coordinator, Undergraduate Social Statistics Study Group
  • Sep 2017 – Apr 2019: Mentorship Program Coordinator (2018–2019) and Peer Mentor (2017–2019), Coordinated Arts Program
Academic Service
January 2016
 — 
January 2020
University of British Columbia

Academic service roles within the department and faculty.

  • Jan 2019 – May 2020: Advisory Committee Member, Advanced Research Cohort (ARC) Program, UBC Department of Sociology
  • Jan 2019 – May 2019: Tenure-Track Instructor Hiring Committee Member, Coordinated Arts Program, UBC Faculty of Arts
  • Sep 2017 – May 2019: Lead Typesetter (2018–2019) and Associate Editor (2017–2018), Sojourners: Undergraduate Journal of Sociology
  • Feb 2018: Selection Panel Member, Arts Undergraduate Society Humanities and Social Sciences Conference

Projects

Conference Presentations
Present
 — 
Present
  • Jan 2026: How Much Does Education Matter for Social Status? Findings from a Conjoint Experiment. — RC28 Online Meeting on Educational Inequalities | Sciences Po (Virtual)
  • Aug 2025: Perceptions of Social Status: Findings from a Conjoint Experiment. — American Sociological Association Annual Meeting 2025 | Chicago, IL
  • Nov 2023: Perceptions of Social Status: Findings from a Conjoint Experiment. — New Methods to Measure Intergenerational Mobility | Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, University of Chicago, IL
  • Aug 2023: The Subjective Social Ladder: Actual, Perceived, and Projected Mobility in 22 Countries. — American Sociological Association Annual Meeting 2023 | Philadelphia, PA
  • Jun 2023: The Post-Liberal Social Classes: Actual and Perceived Levels of Income Inequality and Associated Values. — International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology 2023 | Melbourne, Australia
  • Aug 2022: Expansion and Returns: A Causal Inference Approach to the Positional Value of Education. — American Sociological Association Annual Meeting 2022 | Los Angeles, CA
  • Aug 2021: Intergenerational Educational Assortative Mating: A Study of Individuals Born Between 1970 and 1985. — American Sociological Association Annual Meeting 2021 | Virtual
  • May 2021: Intergenerational Educational Assortative Mating: A Study of Individuals Born Between 1970 and 1985. — Canadian Population Society Annual Meeting 2021 | Virtual
  • Aug 2019: Intergenerational Educational Mobility Over the Past Century in Canada. — American Sociological Association Annual Meeting 2019 (Honors Program) | New York, NY
  • Jun 2019: Intergenerational Educational Mobility Over the Past Century in Canada. — Canadian Sociological Association Annual Meeting 2019 | Vancouver, BC
  • May 2019: Intergenerational Educational Mobility Over the Past Century in Canada. — UBC Anthropology and Sociology Undergraduate Conference 2019 | Vancouver, BC
  • Mar 2019: Intergenerational Educational Mobility Over the Past Century in Canada. — UBC Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference 2019 | Vancouver, BC
  • Jan 2019: Intergenerational Educational Mobility Over the Past Century in Canada. — Harvard University National Collegiate Research Conference 2019 | Cambridge, MA
Professional Affiliations
Present
 — 
Present
  • American Sociological Association
  • Canadian Sociological Association
  • Canadian Population Society
  • International Sociological Association

Education

Stanford University
January 2020
 — 
Present
Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology
  • Dissertation: The Social Significance of Education
  • Dissertation Committee: Dr. Michelle Jackson (Advisor), Dr. Florencia Torche, Dr. David Grusky
  • Qualifying Exams: Social Stratification, Economic Sociology
Stanford University
Present
 — 
January 2022
Master of Arts in Sociology
  • Master’s Thesis: Expansion and Returns: A Causal Inference Approach to the Positional Value of Education
  • Advisors: Dr. Michelle Jackson, Dr. Florencia Torche
University of British Columbia
January 2016
 — 
January 2020
Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Sociology
  • Honors Thesis: Complicating the International Student Classification in Canada: A Computational Grounded Theory Approach
  • Supervisor: Dr. Qiang Fu

Publications

Intergenerational Educational Mobility Over the Past Century in Canada
January 2021
Canadian Review of Sociology

Chow, Alex, and Neil Guppy. 2021. "Intergenerational Educational Mobility Over the Past Century in Canada." Canadian Review of Sociology 58(3):372-398.

The Subjective Social Ladder: Actual, Perceived, and Projected Mobility in 22 Countries
Present
 — 
Present

Chow, Alex. "The Subjective Social Ladder: Actual, Perceived, and Projected Mobility in 22 Countries." Under review.

How Much Does Education Matter for Social Status? Findings from a Conjoint Experiment
Present
 — 
Present

Chow, Alex. "How Much Does Education Matter for Social Status? Findings from a Conjoint Experiment." In preparation.

Residential Relocation Reshapes Daily Exposure Segregation
Present
 — 
Present

Qiao, Si, Junxi Qu, Rosina Pradhananga, Alex Chow, Sarah-Eve Dill, David Grusky, and Anthony Gar-On Yeh. "Residential Relocation Reshapes Daily Exposure Segregation." Under review.

A Supervised LLM System for Large-Scale, Data-Secure Qualitative Coding
Present
 — 
Present

van der Velden, Max, David Grusky, and Alex Chow. "A Supervised LLM System for Large-Scale, Data-Secure Qualitative Coding." In preparation.

Awards

Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program
January 2020
Stanford University
Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) Fellowship
January 2019
Data Science Institute, UBC
Graduate Research Opportunity
January 2025
Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences
Sociology PhD Dissertation Research Opportunity
January 2025
Stanford Department of Sociology
Governor General's Silver Medal in Arts
January 2020
University of British Columbia
Outstanding Graduating Student, Canadian Sociological Association
January 2020
Canadian Sociological Association
Kaspar Naegele Memorial Prize in Sociology
January 2020
University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia Scholarship
January 2019
University of British Columbia
Faculty of Arts International Student Scholarship
January 2019
University of British Columbia
Katherine Brearley Arts Scholarship
January 2019
University of British Columbia
Faculty of Arts International Student Scholarship
January 2018
University of British Columbia
Katherine Brearley Arts Scholarship
January 2018
University of British Columbia
Mo Lin Yu Memorial Prize in the Faculty of Arts
January 2018
University of British Columbia

Languages

English:
Mandarin:

Skills

Technical:
Python, R, Stata

Interests

Research Interests:
Social stratification, inequality, mobility, Educational inequality, higher education, Quantitative, statistical, and survey methods, Computational methods, network analysis, and natural language processing