About
Jasmine Simington is a PhD candidate in the dual Sociology and Public Policy program researching the legal and cultural mechanisms that perpetuate economic instability and racial inequality. Her work is published in Social Forces, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Russell Sage Foundation’s Journal of Social Sciences, and other outlets. Jasmine’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the University of Michigan Law School, and the Center for Racial Justice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Recently, she was named an Emerging Inequality Scholar by the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics and received an award from the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Law Section.
Jasmine’s dissertation is a mixed methods exploration of heirs’ property ownership in Charleston, South Carolina. Heirs’ property owners are those who inherit property after the death of a family member without a legal record transferring ownership. Because there is no documented property transfer, heirs face several barriers navigating common ownership responsibilities. In her dissertation, Jasmine captures how heirs’ property owners navigate their tenuous ownership status amid constraints on their property rights. Other cross-disciplinary, collaborative research explores political support for reparations in Detroit and Flint, Michigan, credit access among Black homeowners, and disaster recovery in Marion County, South Carolina. Before joining the department, Jasmine worked in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute and received her BA in Sociology with honors distinction from Yale University.
