Core Department Faculty Member

Di Zhou (pronounced Dee Joe) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University in 2026.

Zhou has three main research interests: class-based inequality, culture and ideology, and computational methods. Her current work develops and applies computational methods to measure social relations in the workplace and to describe the evolution of the American class structure from the 1970s to the present. She is also working on projects that examine the geography of class, the relationship between class and race, as well as the relationship between class, political ideology, and voting behaviors. In addition, she is interested in developing and applying cutting-edge computational methods and AI models to study the state and change of ideologies in public discourses, with a focus on Chinese civil society. Her research has been published in American Sociological Review, Sociological Science, Scientific Reports, and other venues, and she is also the recipient of the 2025 Erik Olin Wright Prize.