Cassie McMillan

Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology and Criminal Justice

At Northeastern since 2020

Cassie McMillan is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Her work applies a social networks perspective to disentangle how our connections both reproduce and challenge systems of social inequality. She is interested in developing statistical and computational methodologies that can better address these questions and applying these techniques to study adolescent delinquency, immigration, health, substance use, and bullying. Her current research projects focus on modeling social processes as weighted networks where relational ties are assigned quantitative values to indicate their strength or intensity. By conceptualizing patterns of international migration and adolescents’ social connections as weighted networks, she’s uncovering new insights about these social phenomena.

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Awards & Honors

Outstanding Dissertation in Progress Award, American Sociology Association’s Mathematical Sociology Section, 2019.
Outstanding Graduate Paper Award, Honorable Mention, American Sociology Association’s Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section, 2019.
E.O. Scholar Award, 2019-2020.
Alan Booth Graduate Student Award, Pennsylvania State University, 2018.
Population Association of America Poster Award, 2017.

Selected Publications

McMillan, Cassie and Diane Felmlee. Forthcoming. “Beyond Dyads and Triads: A Comparison of Tetrad Motifs in 20 Social Networks.” Social Psychology Quarterly.
McMillan, Cassie. 2019. “Tied Together: Adolescent Friendship Networks, Immigrant Status, and Health Outcomes.” Demography 56(3):1075-1103.
McMillan, Cassie, Diane Felmlee, and Dave Braines. 2019. “Dynamic Patterns of Terrorist Networks: Security versus Efficiency in the Evolution of Eleven Islamic Extremist Attack Networks.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology, doi: 10.1007/s10940-019-09426-9.
McMillan, Cassie, Diane Felmlee, and D. Wayne Osgood. 2018. “Peer Influence, Friend Selection, and Gender: How Network Processes Shape Adolescent Smoking, Drinking, and Delinquency.” Social Networks 55:86-96.
Felmlee, Diane, Cassie McMillan, Paulina Inara Rodis, and D. Wayne Osgood. 2018. “Falling Behind: Lingering Costs of the High School Transition for Youth Friendships and Grades.” Sociology of Education 91(2):159-182.