Chiara Galli Named 2026 Dean’s Early Career Research Award Recipient

The 2026 recipient of the Annual Dean’s Early Career Research Award is Chiara Galli, Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development. Now in its fourth year, the award is supported through a fund created by an anonymous donor in 2022, and recognizes faculty who, at the time of renewal as assistant professor, show outstanding accomplishments and promising research.

“Chiara's research is remarkable in its innovation and depth. Her work contributes to the University of Chicago's defining culture of excellence and uncompromising scholarship,”  said Amanda Woodward, Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences and William S. Gray Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Psychology. “I am delighted she can be recognized for these early accomplishments and grateful to the generosity of the donor who made this possible.”

Chiara Galli
Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Human Development

Galli studies the legal and political struggles that lie at the heart of classifying migration flows, how immigration laws shape people's lives, the role of volunteers and NGOs in migration management, and how children differ from adults as migratory actors and legal subjects in their own right. Her 2023 book, Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the US (University of California Press), is an ethnography of the experiences of Central American unaccompanied minors and their immigration attorneys as they pursue applications for refugee status in the US asylum process. 

In the letter of nomination submitted by faculty in CHD, they noted, “Galli’s work contributes to longstanding interests in migration studies, the institutional context of learning and socialization, youth and adolescent development, and comparative work across nations and cultural groups.”

Galli received her PhD (2020) and MA (2016) in Sociology from UCLA, an MA in Migration and Development from the Universidad de Granada in Spain, and a BA in Development Economics from the Universita di Roma Sapienza. After finishing her doctoral degree, she accepted a prestigious Klarman Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell University. She joined UChicago in 2022.