Refugee Survey Quarterly - Special Issue Launch

Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Sociology, Nuffield College University of Oxford
Research Associate, Refugee Studies Centre

Molly Fee, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Sociology at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and a Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre. In the Fall of 2025, Fee will be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at the University of South Florida. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Fee's interests include social and economic inequality, international migration, forced migration, organizations, the welfare state, and qualitative methods. Fee studies how organizational structure and policies shape the migration and incorporation of refugees in the United States and how refugees interact with the institutions that grant rights and resources.

Molly Fee, PhD, has research published in outlets such as Social Problems, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Associate Instructional Professor
Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
University of Chicago

Jessica Darrow, PhD, is an Associate Instructional Professor and directs the Kiphart Scholars Program in Global Health & Social Development at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. Darrow teaches across the curriculum: in the core and in elective courses within the Kiphart Scholars Program. In 2023 students nominated Darrow for the William Pollak Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Darrow's practice experience includes five years as Executive Director of a small education-based non-profit organization operating in East and Southern Africa, and over two decades of service with the Wieboldt Foundation engaged in supporting local grassroots multi-issue community organizing groups in the Chicago area.

Jessica Darrow, PhD, received her AB from the University of Chicago, and her AM and PhD from the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice.

PhD Candidate
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Jess Howsam Scholl is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose work draws on migration studies, legacies of violence, trauma research, and identity politics. Howsam Scholl's research interests are informed by years of direct practice with survivors of violence. Howsam Scholl's dissertation explores how civil war violence shapes post-war social dynamics broadly and interactions between host communities and immigrants in particular.

Howsam Scholl studies social dynamics in post-war Peru, which currently hosts over one million Venezuelan immigrants and refugees. Previous research focuses on refugee resettlement and organizational theory in the United States and Canada. This work includes a co-authored study of resettlement under the Trump Administration with research partner, Jessica Darrow, PhD. 

Howsam Scholl holds an MSW from the University of Chicago, an MA from Western University, and a BA from Duke University.

Assistant Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work
Assistant Professor of Educational Studies, Marsal Family School of Education
University of Michigan

Ashley E. Cureton, PhD, is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work and School of Education at the University of Michigan. Cureton explores the educational and mental health needs and outcomes of refugee and migrant children and youth and their families.

Cureton seeks to understand how displacement and exploitation impacts overall academic and social development, sense of belonging and cultural identity. Cureton research builds on over a decade of research and practice focusing on child and adolescent development among migrant and refugee populations and other marginalized groups in global contexts like South Africa, Morocco, Peru and Ecuador, to name a few.

Cureton received a PhD and master’s degree from the Crown School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago. Cureton also received graduate certificates in forced migration and refugee mental health from Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and Northwestern University.

Associate Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work
University of Michigan

Odessa Gonzalez Benson, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Detroit School of Urban Studies. Gonzalez Benson's areas of research are refugee resettlement, state-civil society relations (regarding migration), labor migration, critical policy studies and the production of knowledge in social welfare studies and forced migration studies, with three broad aspects to the research.

First, Gonzalez Benson's work contributes to knowledge about grassroots organizations, particularly refugee-run community organizations (RCOs), aiming to inform participatory approaches to social work practice and urban governance. For instance, Gonzalez Benson's studies have examined RCOs' crisis response during the COVID-19 pandemic, participation in urban governance, community health practices and role in resettlement practices.

As part of her Just Futures Action Research Lab, Odessa Gonzalez Benson, PhD, leads her research team in capacity building and technical assistance for RCOs in Grand Rapids, Michigan.