Nicolo P. Pinchak

At Nuffield College, I work with David Kirk and colleagues on the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN+). In addition to my work at Nuffield, I work with colleagues on the Adolescent Health and Development in Context (AHDC) study, which is a longitudinal study combining GPS data, surveys administered in the moment, and self-reported experiences at routine activity locations provided by 1,400 adolescents and their caregivers in Columbus, OH. 

My research examines how features of communities shape individual- and community-level well-being, such as how school resources shape adolescent and neighborhood crime rates, and how everyday mobility patterns shape individuals' risk of experiencing discrimination. I am particularly interested in why more resourced communities — such as low-poverty and more cohesive neighborhoods and schools — do not always yield their anticipated benefits for community members.

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My published work has investigated how routine monitoring among neighborhood residents can deter crime (in Social Forces); racial inequalities in activity space (e.g., exposure to violence, collective efficacy, and segregation; in Demography and American Journal of Sociology); measurement of residents' neighborhoods, activity spaces, and residential segregation (in Urban Studies); how neighborhood and school socioeconomic resources interact to shape adolescent violence (in Journal of Youth and Adolescence); the contribution of geographic mobility patterns to crime (in Annual Review of Criminology); and the protective health effects of HBCU attendance among Black college-goers (in American Journal of Epidemiology). My dissertation examined how the social organization of youths' schools shapes delinquency and violence perpetration during adolescence and early adulthood, and was supported by a NSF-funded dissertation grant from the American Educational Research Association.