Cassandra Engeman is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Science Foundation Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) where she has co-authored publications on workplace safety and health practices in the nanomaterials industry (Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 2013; Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 2012). Findings from this research was used in a 2012 science and technology report to the President of the United States.

Engeman is also a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at UCSB and a Visiting Researcher at the Social Science Research Center in Berlin (WZB) in the Inequality and Social Policy research group. Her research focuses on social movements and workplace policies and explores relationships between social policy and institutions, particularly labor unions. Her dissertation, ʺUnions and Family Values: Union Influence on Workplace Leave Policies in the United States,ʺ uses a mixed method approach to examine the political, social, and economic conditions under which unions influence medical/maternity, family, and sick leave polices at the US state level. She has also published research on social movement unionism and the Los Angeles immigrant rights marches of 2006 (Work, Employment & Society, 2014).