A mixed-methods sociologist of race and ethnicity, Professor Shiao’s work examines how race has remained a fundamental organizing principle for social relations in the United States, with a recurring but nonexclusive consideration of the Asian American experience. He has published research on organizational diversity policies, transracial international adoption, and major issues in racial/ethnic theory. His current research focuses on the social demography of race/ethnicity, particularly translating insights from qualitative research about the life-course salience of race/ethnicity into quantitative research on interracial contact, racial classification, and racial stratification.

Professor Shiao is the author of Identifying Talent, Institutionalizing Diversity: Race and Philanthropy in Post-Civil Rights America (Duke University Press, 2005) and Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race: Korean Adoptees in America (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2011, with Mia Tuan). His work has also been published in the American Journal of Sociology, Sociological Theory, Sociological Perspectives, Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, Comparative Sociology, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Du Bois Review, Race and Society, Asian American Policy Review, and Contexts. He received his B.A. in Women's Studies from Brown University in 1991, and his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1998. He joined the University of Oregon faculty as an Assistant Professor of Sociology in 1998 and later served Dartmouth College as Associate Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies before rejoining the UO faculty in 2009.