Welcome! My name is Marissa Thompson and I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. My research addresses social policy questions at the intersection of race/ethnicity, education, and social stratification. For the 2024-2025 academic year, I am on leave as a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellow.

My current research explores, for example, parental preferences regarding school segregation, the causal effects of first-dollar scholarship policies on college access, and the role of genetic ancestry tests in racial boundary-making processes. I employ a range of methods in my work, including quantitative methods, survey experiments, and both computational and qualitative analyses of text data. My research has been published in journals such as Social Forces, Sociological Science, Sociology of Education, the American Educational Research Journal, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among others.

In addition to research on inequality and social policy, I’m excited about podcasts, knitting, and hiking with my partner Sam and our dog Pickle.