NYU Shanghai Associate Professor of Sociology Yi-Lin Chiang has received the 2026 Asia and Asian America Section Early Career Achievement Award from the American Sociological Association, a recognition of outstanding early-career scholarship on sociological issues related to Asia and Asian America.
“Dr. Chiang’s record is remarkable not only for its productivity, but for its coherence, originality, and ambition,” said Princeton University Professor Yu Xie, who nominated her for the award. “Her work exemplifies the very best of early-career sociology: empirically grounded, theoretically generative, methodologically rigorous, and publicly engaged.”
“I’m deeply honored to receive this award,” Chiang said. “As an early-career recognition, it is especially meaningful because it encourages me to continue building on my long-term research agenda.”
“Educational inequality and intergenerational status transmission in East Asia remain at the heart of my work,” she added. “I’m grateful that the committee recognized the trajectory and promise of my scholarship, and I hope to continue producing work that sheds new light on long-standing questions in sociology.”
Before joining NYU Shanghai in 2023, Chiang taught at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Her research focuses on educational stratification and intergenerational status transmission in greater China, with a particular interest in how schools, families, and social institutions shape inequality across generations.
Her ethnographic work examining how elite status is cultivated, transmitted, and reproduced was published in her 2022 book Study Gods: How the New Chinese Elite Prepare for Global Competition. Chiang followed privileged youth in Beijing as they moved through high school, university, and early career life, tracing how they learned to navigate competition, privilege, and global aspirations. The book received the Pierre Bourdieu Award for the Best Book in Sociology of Education from the Sociology of Education Section of the American Sociological Association in 2023.
In her other lines of research, Chiang uses Taiwanese panel data to explore educational inequality, including how student selection, parental involvement, and family background shape educational outcomes.
Chiang received the award during the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting, which was held from August 7 to 11 in New York City.