Roujman Shahbazian

Roujman Shahbazian is a lecturer in sociology. He is the program coordinator for the program focusing on human resources and work-life issues (the HR program) at Uppsala University.

Shahbazian's research focuses on social stratification, inequality, and family sociology. He is an affiliated researcher at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) at Stockholm University, and at the Department of Sociology at University of Munich (LMU).

Shahbazian obtained his PhD in 2018 from the Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University, and has since been affiliated with the Department of Sociology at Stockholm University and Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich.

Current Research Projects

Shahbazian is currently engaged in three research projects. The first project addresses issues of social mobility within and between generations. A central question is whether annual earnings are a better measure than occupation-based class metrics for approximating lifetime income. In a study published in 2022 in the European Sociological Review, Shahbazian demonstrates that annual income measures are preferable for this purpose over occupation-based class measures. The second study, published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility in 2024, challenges a long-standing assumption in social stratification literature. Traditionally, it is assumed that individuals achieve their class destination relatively early in their careers and remain there for the rest of their lives. Shahbazian's study, however, shows that individuals generally change both occupations and classes throughout their careers, with such changes being more frequent among younger cohorts compared to older ones. In ongoing studies, not yet published, Shahbazian is investigating whether this phenomenon of class maturity applies in countries other than Sweden. Additionally, he explores how these shifts in class and occupation affect intergenerational estimates that measure both parents' and children's occupational outcomes at different ages.

The second major project Shahbazian is involved in focuses on developing a new measure in social stratification. While previous studies have indicated that occupation-based class measures are not as reliable as income, as many sociologists assume, objective and reliable income data are not always available in many research studies. Therefore, occupation-based class measures are the only available option for researchers who do not have access to registry-based income data, such as income and tax registers. In collaboration with researchers from Stockholm University and the University of Lausanne, Shahbazian aims to develop a new measure that combines both income and occupation.

Shahbazian's third project focuses on students' relative positioning in schools. Students' position in the school's ability distribution provides information about their relative abilities, which can affect their confidence and self-esteem. Together with Iman Dadgar, Shahbazian examines how students' relative position influences their educational choices, especially in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields dominated by men. The results, published as a working paper, show that both boys and girls are influenced by having a higher position in school, but the effect is stronger for boys than for girls.