James Mellody

I am a PhD Candidate in Organization Studies and Economic Sociology at the MIT Sloan School of Management. In my research, I leverage a diverse set of quantitative and qualitative methods to study culture in online communities and traditional organizations. In one stream of research, I use text and social network analyses to examine online communities as increasingly important organizational forms that offer new contexts for work, civic action, innovation, and communication and connection more broadly. In a second stream of research, I use primarily ethnographic methods to study how work is changing in traditional organizations—specifically how individuals, teams, and organizations can leverage cultural and technological mechanisms to facilitate better, more inclusive work environments and collaboration across differences. Across these projects, I seek to understand online communities and traditional organizations as aggregations of many individuals with diverse backgrounds, expertise, roles, and tastes. For my dissertation work, I was selected as a finalist in the 2023 INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition.

I am on the job market during the 2023-2024 academic year. My CV can be found here.