The making and measurement of inequality.
I'm a sociologist studying global inequality: how institutions, labor markets, migration, education, health, and policy shape unequal outcomes across societies.
Fariborz Aref
I'm a sociologist whose work examines the structure of inequality and the methods we use to study it. My research sits at the intersection of:
- Global inequality
- Research design & methods
- Mixed methods
- Computational sociology
- Community capacity building & development
My approach pairs quantitative estimation with qualitative interpretation, and is motivated by questions about how welfare regimes, labor markets, migration, education, and health produce and reproduce inequality. Alongside empirical work, I care about reproducible, openly licensed research infrastructure.
Sociology
Structures, models, and the measurement of inequality across societies. PhD, University of Oklahoma.
Community Development
Fieldwork, local governance, and how communities build capacity from within. PhD, Putra University.
Most research picks one of these. Mine moves between them. A question travels from the macro model down to the community system and back, and that is where I think the more honest explanations live.
The Inequality Lab
A central claim in my work: shocks don't hit societies evenly; welfare regimes decide how a recession or a pandemic becomes inequality. Here's that argument as a small model you can run. Drag the slider to watch institutions absorb the shock, and tap or hover the chart to read any year.
Illustrative model: trajectories are schematic, dramatizing the mechanism rather than reporting fitted estimates. Empirical results live in the papers: recession → pandemic · welfare regimes.
The Methodology Lab
Durkheim argued that a society is a reality of its own, never merely the sum of its members. Simpson's paradox is that argument rendered in data.
Sociology's founding claim is that the collective obeys laws its individuals do not. Its statistical shadow is a reversal: a relationship can flip its sign the instant you divide a population into the groups that actually structure it. Here the question is one of my own: does social spending reduce inequality? The honest answer depends entirely on whether you read the aggregate or the structure beneath it.
Pool the data without regard for structure and the relationship itself reverses. Structure is not noise to be controlled away; it is the finding. To read a number honestly, one must first know which groups it conceals.
Illustrative data: a Simpson's-paradox structure grounded in comparative welfare research: societies under greater structural pressure (higher pre-redistribution inequality) tend to spend more, so the pooled correlation reflects who spends, not what spending does. The pattern is real; the points are schematic.
Selected Work
The Book
The Structure of Social Inquiry
Research Design, Evidence, and Explanation
A book about how social scientists move from research questions to credible explanations. It examines research design, evidence, measurement, inference, and interpretation as interconnected parts of the same process of inquiry.
Education, Research, Teaching
Education
Areas of Specialization
- Computational & Quantitative Sociology
- Labor Markets & Economic Change
- Community & Regional Development
- Migration & Demographic Transitions
- Community Participation & Local Governance
- Mixed Methods Research
- Social Inequality & Institutional Barriers
- Organizational & Community Systems
Methodological Expertise
- Structural equation modeling
- Multilevel & longitudinal models
- Generalized estimating equations
- Text & network analysis
- Comparative & simulation-based modeling
- Survey design
- Data visualization
- Fieldwork integration
Software
Courses Taught
Research Labs
Three open research environments supporting qualitative, quantitative, and computational sociology through reproducible workflows, code, and teaching resources.
Qualitative Society Lab
Qualitative methods, coding frameworks, discourse analysis, institutional research, and interpretive inquiry.
Explore LabQuantitative Society Lab
Statistical modeling, reproducible analysis, survey research, multilevel models, and quantitative sociology.
Explore LabComputational Sociology Hub
Computational social science, text mining, network analysis, simulation, and AI-assisted social research.
Explore HubHighlights
Recognition & Media
- Ranked among the Top Two Worldwide in Capacity Building, ScholarGPS, 2025.
- Featured in Science Magazine, 2025, for research on welfare inequality.
- Guest, Takoma Radio: “Disability Inclusion and Research Productivity,” 2018.
Foundations
“The world is not random. It is structured. So is inequality.”
Three classical accounts of inequality, and where my work picks up the thread.
Marx
Capital & class
The economic engine of inequality.
Weber
Class, status & power
How institutions organize advantage.
Durkheim
Solidarity & cohesion
What holds societies together under strain.
My work joins these threads: the macro structure of inequality and the community systems that absorb it.
Get in Touch
Fariborz Aref
Sociologist and Researcher
Email: fariborz.aref@gmail.com
Elsewhere
- Website · fariborzaref.com
- X · @FariborzAref
- ORCID · 0000-0001-6622-1824