Professor of Sociology and Complex Systems
About
Bruch is a Professor of Sociology and Complex Systems at the University of Michigan and the Associate Director of Michigan’s Institute for Data and AI in Society. She is also an External Faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute and a former Fellow at both the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. Her research integrates choice modeling, network science, and agent-based simulation to study how individual decisions shape—and are shaped by—structured social environments. She has made influential contributions to the study of residential segregation, marriage and dating markets, and higher education, with work published in Science, PNAS, Science Advances, Demography, and the American Journal of Sociology. Bruch’s contributions have been recognized by the Innovation Prize from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Methodology and the Merton Prize from the International Network of Analytical Sociologists, as well as multiple best article awards. Her forthcoming book, Date Like a Local (Princeton University Press, expected 2027), offers a data-rich exploration of how cities shape romantic opportunities and courtship behavior.
