Catherine’s research examines how the processes of state governance—from population-level policies to everyday institutional interactions—intersect to shape the life chances of marginalized groups, particularly low-income Black and Brown families. Empirically, she has sought to answer this question by studying the effects of state policy, from mass incarceration to restrictive immigration laws, on women’s and infant health; how the state governs children at the junction of child welfare and juvenile justice institutions; and how the process of leaving prison influences social integration and mental health. In these projects, Catherine has deployed a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, including ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, and analyses of survey and administrative data that leverage causal inference techniques. Taken together, her research contributes to the fields of health disparities; poverty and inequality; punishment and society; race, class, and gender; and methods for studying hard-to-reach populations.