Emma Zang
dremmazang.bsky.social
Emma Zang
@dremmazang.bsky.social

Associate Professor @YaleSoc @ysphbiostat @JacksonYale | Advocate for evidence-based family and health policies | Data science enthusiast

Sociology 19%
Political science 19%

See many of you next Friday!

The Hoover Institution was a beautiful setting, and the organizing team was fantastic. I’m already planning to join again next year. Hope to see more demographers and sociologists there!

Had a great time at the Remote Work Conference last week! It’s been a while since I’ve attended such an intellectually stimulating and welcoming event.

Reposted by Cameron Campbell

Just posted a new working paper on SSRN! We pit rule-based, machine learning, and various LLM methods against each other to classify social outcomes (like gender, custody, and housing) from Chinese divorce judgments. What can human–machine disagreement teach us about validity and inference?
<p><b><span>From Extraction to Inference: Comparing Rule-Based, Machine Learning, and LLM Approaches for Classifying Social Outcomes in Legal Text</span></b></p>
<p><span>Legal texts encode key social outcomes, but their unstructured format, domain-specific language, and culturally embedded cues make them difficult to an
papers.ssrn.com

Join us in advancing cutting-edge, data-driven research on inequality and population health! Please spread the word!

The official posting will appear soon on our lab website, but interested candidates are encouraged to reach out now with a CV and a writing sample (with an associated sample code). You can reach me at emma.zang@yale.edu. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until we find the right fit.
Z-CAFÉ will soon open a new postdoctoral position. We’re looking for scholars passionate about family, health, demography, policy, and aging, broadly defined, who also bring strong statistical and computational skills.

Looking forward to the amazing Deborah Carr visiting us next Monday!

Excited to attend this year's Remote Work Conference at Stanford (www.remoteworkconference.org)! Look forward to connecting with scholars who are interested in flexible work and those in the Stanford area!
2025 Conference Schedule
The Schedule
www.remoteworkconference.org

This would likely be a side project, but I think it could be extremely interesting (and important). If this sparks your curiosity too, please reach out or drop me a message—I’d love to chat!

I’d love to start talking with families whose children or parents have been in facilities recently acquired by private equity companies. I’m also looking to connect with researchers—especially those with qualitative expertise—who might be interested in exploring this with me.

As both a scholar who studies caregiving and a parent, I find this trend fascinating—and a bit concerning. There’s already a growing body of research on private equity in healthcare, but much less on its impact on the everyday experiences of families.

Lately I’ve been hearing parents talk about how private equity firms are increasingly buying up daycares and nursing homes in Connecticut.

As someone who studies family, law, and inequality, I found these stories both personal and urgent—they remind us how policies ripple through everyday lives and futures.

I hope you’ll take a moment to read it and support student journalism: thenewjournalatyale.com/2025/09/disr...
Disrupted Customs | The New Journal
Chinese international students are the foremost targets of Trump’s student visa restrictions. Now, their place at Yale and their ability to speak freely seem more precarious.
thenewjournalatyale.com

I was recently interviewed for this thoughtful piece in The New Journal about Chinese international students navigating today’s political climate. The article captures both the courage and vulnerability of students whose education and voices are shaped by forces far beyond the classroom.
Disrupted Customs | The New Journal
Chinese international students are the foremost targets of Trump’s student visa restrictions. Now, their place at Yale and their ability to speak freely seem more precarious.
thenewjournalatyale.com

Yes I realized!

Yes trying to be more active here haha

Thank you Cameron!!

A wonderful collaboration with colleagues at Yale Medicine, Yale Biostatistics, and Johns Hopkins Biostatistics.

In this paper, first-authored by my former Yale master’s student (now a Biostats PhD at UChicago), we propose a Bayesian hierarchical modeling approach with poststratification as a clear alternative, with the added perk of enabling larger, combined analytic samples.

Sampling weights in large surveys like NHATS often cause confusion when combining cohorts.

Reposted by Cameron Campbell

New in American Journal of Epidemiology! doi.org/10.1093/aje/...
Validate User
doi.org

I’d be thrilled to see familiar names in the pool, and I’m also happy to chat with prospective applicants.

This is a rare opportunity to help shape the future of quantitative social science at Yale. The search committee is chaired by Nicholas Christakis, with Johan Ugander (Statistics) and myself serving as members.
🚨 We’re hiring! Yale Sociology is searching for a Senior Quantitative Sociologist to join our department.

Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/174709
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com

Reposted by Emma Zang

We're hiring for a senior appointment at the rank of Associate Professor or Professor!

Apply here: facultypositions.stanford.edu/en-us/job/49...
Stanford | Faculty Positions: Details - Senior appointment in the Department of Sociology at the rank of Associate Professor or Professor
facultypositions.stanford.edu
Carolina Sociology is hiring!

• Tenure-track in computational sociology or advanced quantitative methods
• Open rank in population health.

unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...
unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...
Assistant Professor
This Assistant Professor position will teach graduate and undergraduate courses, conduct research in the field of Sociology, participate in departmental service, and mentor graduate students.
unc.peopleadmin.com

Reposted by Cameron Campbell

Grateful my article made “Most Popular of the Week” at Foreign Policy. A reminder that beyond wars and geopolitics, the lived experiences of ordinary people in China also resonate deeply with readers.

Excited to share that my lab’s new website (zcafe.net) is live!
We’re building Z-CAFÉ to study health, family, and inequality in a changing world, using data science tools. The site is the place to watch for upcoming openings (pre-docs, postdocs, RAs).
Check it out and stay tuned!
Z-CAFE Lab - Home
zcafe.net