Dr. Tiana Marrese Joins Rutgers SPAA Faculty as Assistant Professor

Dr. Tiana Marrese has joined the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University–Newark as an assistant professor starting in Fall 2025.

Dr. Marrese's research examines volunteerism and nonprofit employment, largely aiming to understand how and why individuals engage in these realms, and the core of her research studies paid and unpaid (volunteer) work in nonprofit and public sectors. Her interdisciplinary projects are connected by an interest in understanding how and why people provide labor to public-serving organizations and the resulting implications this has for the market. She specializes in quantitative, macro-level analyses of publicly available datasets. 

She earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Social Welfare (PhD) from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2), and her MSc from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her doctoral dissertation, "Paid and Unpaid Labor Across Sectors, A Three Paper Dissertation," explored the three topics of nonprofit wage differentials, the relationship between early-life volunteerism and sector of employment, and how identity influences the propensity to enter public and nonprofit jobs.

"I am extremely excited about the opportunity to join such an vibrant faculty and school, and already feel like I'm at home when I'm at Rutgers SPAA," said Dr. Marrese.