Alisha Kirchoff is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology. Alisha's research interests include law and society, political sociology, organizations, and professions. At IU, she was a 2015-2016 FLAS fellow and her Master's project is an analysis of the implementation of Russia's Maternity Capital Policy.
She earned undergraduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in Political Science, Russian, and International Studies. She went on to get a Master of Arts from the University of Toronto where she enrolled in the Munk Center for Global Affairs Program in European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. From there, Alisha went to the Social Science Research Council in New York City where she worked as a program coordinator. Part of her job included coordinating teams of sociologists in the U.S. and Russia on a project promoting indigenous social science research on gender, sexuality, and health in the Russian Federation. After almost 3 years at SSRC, Alisha became the associate director for the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC) at the University of Illinois. After several years of supporting a number of research initiatives, Alisha decided that she wanted to pursue her own research in a Ph.D. program.