Esma Ozel Alothman is a critical sociologist whose work focuses on how educational policies shape private decision making about schooling and educational opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds. She explores this question in her dissertation research by examining how families navigate the transition from middle school to high school in Turkey, an illustrative country characterized by drastic, uncertainty-inducing secondary education policies. Using an interpretive approach, her research underscores the situated and improvised nature of parents’ educational strategies in volatile schooling contexts. Alothman received a PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2022 and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University.