We came together to organize SODAL.
Uzma Chowdhury is a PhD student in the Sociology Department at Columbia University. She is broadly interested in the political economy of childhood, including the relationship between the family, state, and the structural regulation of childhood from the perspectives of children. Currently, she is working on an archival project focused on the experiences of young girls and queer children who were incarcerated as “wayward minors” during the mid-19th to early-20th-century in New York City.
Her interests in the sociology of death and livability focus on the questions: What is childhood? Who has access to a safe and protected childhood, and which children are excluded from institutional and state protection? She is interested in the construction of certain children as “born-terrorist” or “morally depraved” threats to society to legitimize politcal violence in the forms of infanticide and mass incarceration. She also focuses on the experiences of children living under conditions of “social death” (Patterson, 1982) and the ways in which they resist, restructure, and reclaim childhood.
Prior to joining Columbia, Uzma was an elementary and middle school teacher, and worked at various education, human rights, and gender justice nonprofits. She received her MA in Sociology and Education from Teachers College at Columbia (2023), and a BA in Literature and BA in Political Science from the University of Georgia (2014).
Research Interests: sociology of childhood, biopolitics, collective violence, historical sociology, gender & sexuality, family
Ashtan Grace Towles (she/her) is a doctoral student in the Sociology Department at Columbia University researching carceral transparency and inequality. Prior to Columbia, Ashtan worked on human rights practices within prisons, community-driven approaches to hate violence prevention, alternatives to law enforcement, and the impacts of legislative decision-making on communities of color. Born and raised in Nashville, TN, she holds a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from Yale University (2019)
Teddy Zamborsky (he/him) is a PhD student in the Sociology Department at Columbia University and the coordinator for SODAL for the 2026-2027 academic year. His research examines the relationship between scientific theories of pain and the death penalty in the USA. His work draws on science and technology studies, sociology of expertise, and sociology of medicine.
Teddy joined the department after finishing his MSc in Science, Technology and Society at University College London in 2024. Prior to pursuing his master’s, he worked in the tech industry for five years and earned his B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago.