Biography

Dr. Heili Pals received Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University in 2006. After graduation she spent two years as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Laboratory of Social Deviance in Texas A&M University.

Dr. Pals was born and raised in Estonia: a small country that until 1991 was part of the former Soviet Union. She grew up in a state controlled society and participated in one of the most remarkable peaceful independence movements in recent history. She witnessed firsthand the transformation of a state controlled economy to a capitalist one. These experiences inspired her interest in learning how social contexts shape the relationships between adolescents' behaviors, self evaluations, and adults' social positions and attainment.

Heili's doctoral dissertation examined the effects of adolescent noncompliance on labor market outcomes in regions of the former Soviet Union. Currently, she is working on several articles that focus on the interrelations of self-feelings, deviant behavior, and neighborhood contexts in US. Her research interests, in general, lie at the intersections of stratification, social psychology, deviance, and the life course.  Dr. Pals has published in Social Psychology Quarterly and International Journal of Sociology and co-authored a book on the participation in the US Census published by Russell Sage Foundation.