#  Erica Jaffe Redner 

Postdoctoral Fellow, National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Foundation.

Affiliate, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion (2026-2027).

 

 

 



   ![Erica Redner Headshot in front of trees. ](/sites/g/files/omnuum8346/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2026-09/EJR%20Headshot%20May%202026.jpeg?itok=YStI-Qxa) 

 



 

 email <erjaffe@sas.upenn.edu> 

 



 

**Research interests:** Class and social mobility, cross-class interaction, institutional belonging, inequality, labor markets, work and organizations, sociology of education.

  
**Bio:** Erica Jaffe Redner is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research addresses structural inequalities at the intersection of education and employment. She is especially interested in social class origins and how they impact Americans' access to economic opportunity and their experience of institutional belonging throughout their professional lives. In examining these experiences, Erica is particularly attentive to how they intersect with ongoing shifts in the nature of work and corporate strategy, the state of cross-class engagement in America, and changing trends in communal involvement more broadly. She employs mixed methods in her research, including interviews, participant observation, surveys, and archival work. Erica holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also received extensive secondary training in management at the Wharton School. Prior to pursuing her PhD, she served as a researcher alongside policy-oriented faculty at Harvard's Kennedy School and Edmond &amp; Lily Safra Center for Ethics, and remains deeply committed to both institutions' missions of mobilizing scholarship to address contemporary social challenges.

**Research Summary:** I am currently working on a book project that illuminates the longitudinal mobility journeys of lower-SES background first-generation college graduates from one elite and one very selective university. It focuses particularly on their experiences of belonging amidst predominantly higher-SES background peers on campus, and explores how these integration experiences ultimately shaped (1) their decisions to embrace or reject upper-middle class culture, (2) the scope of the professional options they would consider post-college, and (3) their long-term workplace belonging experiences.

*This information is accurate as of the affiliate year indicated. (last updated 09.01.2026)*



 

 

 





 

 

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