Kelly Nielsen

Biographic Data

ID147735
NAMEKelly Nielsen
GIVEN NAMESKelly
FAMILY NAMENielsen
SIGNATURENIELSEN K
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of California San Diego
ORCID0000-0001-6125-6091
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS10
TOTAL CITATIONS117
AUTHOR COUNT10
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2015
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX5

  • Sovereignty, Reciprocity, and Evidence: Practical Recommendations From a State-Funded Tribal Evaluation

    Open AccessNathaniel J Gonzalez, Lauren Nippoldt et al.ARTICLEAmerican Journal of Evaluation2026

    Evaluations of Tribe-led programs that are funded by non-Tribal entities navigate tensions between mainstream scientific norms and Indigenous ways of knowing. This article reflects on these tensions within the California American Indian Tobacco Initiative Evaluation (CAITIE), which assessed the impact of the California Department of Public Health's Tribal Grants to Reduce Tobacco-Related Disparities between 2019 and 2024. In navigating these tens…

  • Tribal-Led Commercial Tobacco Prevention: Outcomes from the California American Indian Tobacco Initiative Evaluation

    Open AccessNathaniel J Gonzalez, Lauren Nippoldt et al.ARTICLEJournal of Racial and Ethnic…2025References: 20

    Commercial tobacco-related health disparities persist for American Indian and Alaska Natives in the USA despite widespread reductions in commercial tobacco use in the general population. Addressing these disparities requires a culturally relevant approach but the diversity of Tribal communities, including historical, cultural, social, and economic differences, can make uniform public health interventions that are culturally relevant challenging t…

  • “Diversity is a corporate plan”: Racialized equity labor among university employees

    L T Hamilton, Kelly Nielsen et al.ARTICLEEthnic and Racial Studies2022

    Drawing on ninety-four interviews with university employees at two four-year publics, we identify elements of the “racialized equity labor”, or efforts to challenge racial inequities in the university environment, primarily undertaken by employees of color. We argue that the amount and intensity of racialized equity labor is related to organizational logics of race, or cultural values and beliefs about race that people use to organize their activ…

  • Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities

    Laura T Hamilton, Kelly NielsenBOOKBroke2021

  • Tolerable Suboptimization: Racial Consequences of Defunding Public Universities

    Open AccessL T Hamilton, Kelly Nielsen et al.ARTICLESociology of Race and Ethnicity2021

    We argue that the public defunding of public higher education and turn to private revenue streams—for example, non-resident tuition, grants, philanthropy, and corporate sponsorship—generates organizational racial resource disparities. We draw on a year-long qualitative case study of a University of California campus with a majority Latinx and low-income student body, including ethnographic observations and interviews with administrators, staff, a…

  • Toward a theory of alienation: Futurelessness in Financial Capitalism

    Open AccessTad Skotnicki, Kelly NielsenARTICLETheory and Society2021Cited by: 6References: 67

  • Racialized Equity Labor, University Appropriation and Student Resistance

    Open AccessVeronica Lerma, L T Hamilton et al.ARTICLESocial Problems2020Cited by: 30References: 24

    We coin the term 'racialized equity labor' to describe the often uncompensated efforts of people of color to address systematic racism and racial marginalization within organizations. Using a year-long ethnographic and interview study of a majority-minority public university, we focus specifically on the racialized equity labor of college students who, like many faculty and staff of color, often labor to make their campuses comfortable and functi…

  • Sociology towards death: Heidegger, time and social theory

    Open AccessKelly Nielsen, Tad SkotnickiARTICLEJournal of Classical Sociology2019Cited by: 7References: 32

    In this article, we draw on the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger to propose an approach to sociology that takes human experiences of finitude and possibility as crucial topics of investigation. A concern with death is not absent in sociological thought. To the contrary, Durkheim's Suicide grounds a sociological research tradition into death and dying. Yet Heidegger's existentialism renders our finitude - not just death - a matter of …

  • Providing a ''Leg Up: Parental Involvement and Opportunity Hoarding in College

    Open AccessL T Hamilton, Laura Hamilton et al.ARTICLESociology of Education2018Cited by: 49References: 50

    Although higher education scholars are increasingly exploring disparities within institutions, they have yet to examine how parental involvement contributes to social-class variation in students' experiences. We ask, what role do parents play in producing divergent college experiences for students from different class backgrounds? Relying on interviews with 41 families, including mothers, fathers, and their daughters, we find that affluent parent…

  • Fake It 'til You Make It: Why Community College Students’ Aspirations ‘‘Hold Steady

    Open AccessKelly NielsenARTICLESociology of Education2015Cited by: 25References: 48

    Sociologists of education have explored the relationship between students' postsecondary aspirations and their propensity to get 'cooled out' in community colleges. However, researchers have directed little attention to students whose aspirations remain stable over long periods of time or to the different roles that college degree goals play in the lives of disadvantaged students. Using four waves of longitudinal interviews, I examine the reasons…