Thomas Marlow

Postdoctoral Associate Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: BA Illinois Wesleayn University; MA Brown University; PhD Brown University

Research Areas: Environmental Sociology; Urban Sociology; Inequality; Social Networks; Computational Social Science


Thomas Marlow is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Interacting Urban Networks (CITIES). Thomas received his PhD in Sociology from Brown University in Spring 2020. His research sits at the intersection of environmental and urban sociology and data science. It seeks to use innovative computational social science methodologies to answer questions about environmental inequalities during global climate change and barriers to advancing policy to promote the transition to a more sustainable future.

Thomas's recent work with Drs. Kinga Makov and Bruno Abrahao in CITIES uses mobile phone location data to study the ways daily mobility reinforces neighborhood inequalities. Their first paper published in Sociological Science was the first to show that mobility inequality is stable in normal years, but that cities became increasingly isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic. This work was highlighted in the Boston Globe and has important implications for creating more just policies to address the spread of infectious disease, and inequality in cities.