Vikki Katz, Ph.D.

I am currently a postdoctoral research associate on the Metamorphosis Project. I also worked on the Metamorphosis Project as a Annneberg Fellow from 2002 to 2007 while completing my M.A. and Ph.D. Prior to my time with the Project, I received my B.A. from UCLA, graduating cum laude with degrees in Mass Communication and Education. My research focuses on the social inequalities experienced by immigrant and ethnic minority families in urban communities, with specific emphasis on the strategies that famlies develop in response to these challenges, particularly around health disparities and educational inequity.

My dissertation: “From conversation to conversion: Children’s efforts to translate their immigrant families’ social networks into community connections” focused on the roles that children of immigrants play in their families’ connections to their local community. With communication infrastructure theory as the main framework, this project incorporated domestic infrastructure and social capital theories to explore how children’s brokering of community information resources in their homes, and in resident networks, collected resources that could potentially be converted into connections with community institutions: schools, health care, and social services. Convergence between different methods of data collection facilitated a nuanced understanding of how child brokers helped their families make and maintain these institutional connections, as well as the consequences, positive and negative, to the children themselves.

Matthew Matsaganis, Dr. Sandra Ball-Rokeach, and I are currently writing a book focused on ethnic and immigrant media, in international perspective. This book is intended as a textbook and as a contribution to curriculum development on this important topic. We are currently under contract with Sage Publications, and book is scheduled for publication in 2009.

For more information on these projects and others, as well as biographical information, please visit: www.vikkikatz.com