Position Title
PhD
Education
- Ph.D. University of California - Davis, Sociology (2025)
- M.A. University of California - Davis, Sociology (2017)
- B.A. San Francisco State University, Sociology (2012)
About
I am a qualitative researcher with expertise in law & policy and science & technology. During graduate school I found myself working on issues related to climate change mitigation within two prominent research institutes on campus-- the Energy & Efficiency Institute (EEI) and the Institute for Transportation Studies (ITS). Working within and across these subfields, I have become particularly interested in knowledge production, and as such, my research focuses on expertise, claims making, and bureaucracy. My research asks questions such as who get to make claims? Who get to be experts? Who get to make decisions? How do different claims get linked? My work pays close attention to the specific contexts in which knowledge is produced (e.g., law, science, popular culture), and enacted (e.g., government, courts, health care, schools) and the associated impacts on historically underrepresented groups.
Publications
Outcault, S., Alston-Stepnitz, E., & Taylor, M. (2024). Stakeholder perspectives on the role of standards in establishing a load-flexible ecosystem. In Proceedings of the ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. Sanguinetti, A., Hirschfelt, K., Chakraborty, D., Favetti, M., Kong, N., Alston-Stepnitz, E., & Cimene, A. (2024). EV Explorer 2.0: An Online Vehicle Cost Calculator for Gig Drivers Considering Going Electric. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 233-252. Alston-Stepnitz, E., Sanguinetti, A., & Outcault, S. (2023). Design Specifications for Bidirectional Feedback on Indoor Environmental Quality. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 3-18. Outcault, S., Alston-Stepnitz, E., Sanguinetti, A., DePew, A. N., & Magaña, C. (2022). Building lower-carbon affordable housing: case studies from California. Building Research & Information, 1-16. Sanguinetti, A., Outcault, S., Alston-Stepnitz, E., Moezzi, M., & Ingle, A. (2021). Residential Solar Water Heating: California Adopters and Their Experiences. Renewable Energy. Alston-Stepnitz, E., Sanguinetti, A., Outcault, S., & Peffer, T. (2020). Connected Thermostats for Low-Income Households: Insights from User Testing. In Proceedings of the ACEEE 2020 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. Sanguinetti, A., Ferguson, B., Oka, J., Alston-Stepnitz, E., & Kurani, K. (2020). Designing Robo-Taxis to Promote Ride-Pooling. In International Conference on Human Interaction and Emerging Technologies. Springer, Cham. |
Awards
2020 Leon Mayhew Prize for the Best Qualifying Paper ($1,000)
2020 Mellon Public Scholar Fellowship ($7,500)
2015 Provost’s Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences ($25,000)