Sophie studies the political causes and consequences of inequality in the United States, through a policy-focused and comparatively informed perspective. Her research pays particular attention to the ways in which public policy concentrates disadvantage by gender, race, and place to differentiate the quality of individual experiences with American democracy.

To do so, she draws upon wide-ranging methodological approaches, combining historical/archival and interview methods with a versatile, microtargeted method for quasi-experimental panel studies that measure policy-affected citizens' lives.