Research

Very broadly, I focus on understanding the connections between the root causes of social inequalities, how the intensity of those inequalities varies across individuals’ social positions—such as class, gender, and ethnicity—and how people navigate different systems of power given their social positions and resources.

Specifically, my work focused on how people navigate barriers to healthcare through utilizing their community networks and social ties. In my first qualitative project, I explored how women who faced barriers to access abortions in Turkey navigated those barriers by utilizing their social ties. Building on this, in another project, I employed hierarchical multilevel models to investigate how women make use of their social position within the household to resist the norms of female circumcision in Kurdistan. Building on my interest in understanding how social ties help navigate barriers, in my second qualitative project, I explored how migrant women and men access and use their social networks to navigate barriers during migration.

This previous work helped me develop my dissertation project, which focuses on men’s reproductive healthcare. I am specifically exploring how men think of men’s health, access to reproductive healthcare services and information, and discuss men’s health and reproduction with their social networks in the U.S. In addition to my dissertation project, I am also currently working on multiple projects on Ohioan women’s reproductive health as a research assistant with the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network (OPEN).

I am committed to publishing my work in open access. If you have any issues accessing a paper, please reach out at esengen.1@osu.edu.

Publications