Maria Krysan, is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Senior Scholar at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. She focuses her research on racial residential segregation and racial attitudes. Her investigations of these substantive issues often connect to methodological questions about how to study this sensitive area of social life. She combines standard closed-ended survey analysis with mode of administration experiments, analyses of open-ended survey questions, focus groups, and in-depth interviews. Her most recent book, with co-author Kyle Crowder, is Cycle of Segregation: Social Processes and Residential Stratification (Russell Sage Foundation, 2017). In this award-winning book, the authors draw on in-depth interviews, large-scale survey data, and previously published research to propose an innovative framework for understanding the causes of racial residential segregation. Krysan is co-editor (with Amanda Lewis) of an edited volume with Amanda Lewis (The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity, Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), and a co-author (with H. Schuman, L. Bobo and C. Steeh) of the book Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (Harvard University Press, Revised Edition, 1997).

She is also responsible for a website that updates the data from that book. Her research has also appeared in a range of journals, including the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, The DuBois Review, Demography, Social Problems, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Science Research, Population Research and Policy Review, and others. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Russell Sage Foundation, and Ford Foundation.  Krysan serves on the editorial board of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of Social Science Research and Social Problems and has been a member of the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey.

Public Opinion Quarterly.

Editorial Board Member, 2000 – 2015. 

American Sociological Association’s Rose Series. 

Editorial Board Member, 2013 – 2015. 

Poverty and Race Research Action Council, Washington D.C.

Social Science Advisory Board Member, 2013 to Present. 

The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Ph.D. in Sociology, 1995. 

The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; M.A. in Sociology, 1992. 

Stanford University, Stanford, California; A.B. with Distinction in Social Sciences: Sociology, 1988.