Hot Takes: Academic Career Paths with Neda Maghbouleh and Clayton Childress

DATE

Wednesday February 4, 2026

TIME

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

COST

Free

The Graduate Student Council of Sociology (GSCS) is relaunching the Hot Takes Series events. We will invite one faculty member each month to share their hot take on an aspect of academia with graduate students in our program.

The objective is two-fold:

For graduate students to meet and network with faculty members, which may be particularly useful if you are looking for committee members or just want to get to know our professors.
For graduate students to learn how to thrive as a sociologist, beyond classroom-skills.

Our first event of 2026 will be on Wednesday, February 4th, at 4:00 PM in Koerner’s Pub. We will be joined by Professors Neda Maghbouleh and Clayton Childress to hear their hot takes on academic career paths.

Please RSVP via the Qualtrics Survey link. We look forward to seeing you at the Hot Takes Event!

Text on the poster reads. TWO SOCIOLOGISTS, TWO PATHS:
Neda Maghbouleh and Clayton Childress are both tenured academic sociologists, but they've built their careers in distinct ways- from different research styles and publication strategies to different knowledge mobilization activities. In this hot takes session, they will compare notes on their divergent approaches, discussing what worked, what didn't, and why there's no single template for thriving in academia.Bring your questions about everything from designing projects and identifying collaborators to managing workload and finding your scholarly identity. This is a candid conversation exploring what is universal and what is personal about building a career in academic sociology.

MEET DR. NEDA MAGHBOULEH
Neda Maghbouleh is Canada Research Chair in Race, Ethnicity, Migration, and Identity at JC, where she has been Associate Protessor of Sociology since 2023. Her work focuses on race, ethnicity, migration, belonging, with publications in journais such as PNAS and AJs, and a solo-authored categories and classit book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race (Stanford University Press. Her research has been featured in outlets like NPR and The New Yorker and she provides expertise to organizations like Statistics Canada, the U.S. Census Bureau, the American Medical Association, and the Spencer Foundation.

MEET DR. CLAYTON CHILDRESS
Clayton Childress is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of British Columbia. His research interests include the creation, production, and reception of culture, taste, decision making, and meaning making. Recently completed projects include work on cultural tastes and polarization, and tokenism in the creation of postcolonial literature. Current projects include research on identity, inequality, and book bannings, and polarization around iconic historical figures.

An information poster for the Hot Takes event on February 4, 2026.