Sangeetha Madhavan is a Professor in the Departments of Sociology and African-American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park. She currently serves as the Chair of the Department of African American Studies. She received her MA and PHD in Sociology and Demography from the University of Pennsylvania. She has a wide range of research interests including family demography, children's well-being, parenting, household and family change, the social context of HIV/AIDS and health in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, the Global South and the US. Her recent publications appear in Population and Development Review, Teaching Sociology and Urban Studies. She is currently the principal investigator of a five year NICHD R01 grant to study kinship, marriage and child health in low income urban  communities in Nairobi, Kenya . She teaches courses on Social Inequalities and Health, HIV/AIDS in Global Perspective and African Development. She has mentored a number of Sociology PHD students who have gone onto post-doctoral positions at Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Population Council.