Edith-Marie Green selected for Fulbright Award
Edith-Marie Green selected for Fulbright Award
Edith-Marie Green, PhD candidate in Population Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was recently selected for a Fulbright Open Study/Research Award. She will be spending 10 months in Potsdam and Berlin, Germany conducting field research on the social networks of older adults and how cultural variations in loneliness and social connection influence dementia risk. Green will be working with Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe during her time in Germany.
Erin Gaede, PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently published a commentary in The Conversation titled “When private equity firms buy mobile home parks, rent increases leave residents with few affordable options in rural area.” Gaede discusses the nuances of mobile homes and other manufactured homes and how they impact low-income residents, who are often priced out of their homes. Gaede draws on qualitative interview data in her commentary and also links the history of single-room occupancy units to the current crisis.
RSS President Lisa Pruitt, Brigitte Bodenheimer Research Scholar and Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, recently published an article titled “Rurality and Redistricting: California’s Proposition 50, Rural Identity, and Democratic Legitimacy” in the Maine Law Review. The article offers a ruralist critique of the hyper-partisan redistricting phenomenon initiated in mid-2025. The article focuses more specifically on how this redistricting has impacted rural communities in northern California. Pruitt calls for greater attention to—and protection of—rural places as communities of interest in redistricting practice.
Florence Becot, Nationwide Insurance Early Career Professor and Agricultural Safety and Health Program Lead at Pennsylvania State University, was recently a speaker on a panel with the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety called “Triple Burden on Women in Ag.” Other speakers on the panel included Christina Day, Farm Services Navigator at the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health, and Destiny Trombley, Research Coordinator at the Northeast Center + New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health. Becot’s research focuses on understanding and supporting farm families’ ability to meet their needs with an emphasis on their health, safety, well-being, and economic viability.
Tim Slack, professor of sociology at Louisiana State University, was recently featured on the Newell Normand Show, which is from WWL, a radio station based in New Orleans, LA. Slack spoke about community and state-level population change in the state of Louisiana. Slack’s research coalesces around the areas of social stratification and social demography, with an emphasis on comparisons across geographic space and the rural-urban continuum.
Loka Ashwood, professor of community and environmental sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Michael Bell, Chair and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently published a book through the University of Chicago Press with colleague Jay Orne. Titled “Our Blood: The Social Experience of Heritas,” the book describes the central importance of our sense not just of our heritage, but our embodied heritage: that our past is in our bodies and runs in our blood, and that our embodied past is central to our futures. The authors argue that greater awareness of heritas’s social origins and social selectivity can help us cultivate a wider sense of mutual care and ease the divisiveness of our time.
Florence Becot, Nationwide Insurance Early Career Professor and Agricultural Safety and Health Program Lead at Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, was recently featured on a webinar with the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology. Titled “Supporting the Mental Health and Economic Viability of Agricultural Communities,” the webinar focused on the mental health challenges facing farm families, what structural and social factors drive them, and what responses — from peer support to policy change — are showing real results. The session included a substantive Q&A covering help-seeking barriers, stigma, regional differences, and what policymakers should prioritize.
Jorden Jackson, who recently received her dual-title PhD in Rural Sociology and Demography from The Pennsylvania State University and now works at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford, recently published an article in Population and Development Review with colleagues Brian C. Thiede, Nigel James, and Samrin Sauda. Titled “Conflict, Climate, and Child Health: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa,” the article uses data from 23 countries in Sub-Saharan African to understand how sociopolitical instability and climate change shape stressors that impact early-life health outcomes. They find that conflict and increased heat are both negative for child health and development, and that the effects vary across groups.
Mara Tieken, a professor of education at Bates College whose research centers on racial and educational equity in rural schools and communities, recently spoke with The Key with Inside Higher Ed. She focused on the rural students she followed into an elite institution for her most recent book, how their challenges represent the experiences of many rural students in the country and what support for rural students on campus looks like. Policymakers and higher ed institutions have worked to provide better opportunities and resources for underserved communities, but access to affordable education and supports for rural students remain challenging. Meanwhile, threats to federal funding for TRIO programs could make it even harder for rural students to get into college, and when they get on campus, few institutions understand their specific needs.
Tim Slack, professor of sociology at Louisiana State University, and Shannon Monnat, professor of sociology and Lerner Chair in Public Health Promotion and Population Health at Syracuse University, were recently featured in the ThriveIN podcast from Wabash County, Indiana. The interview focused around their recent article in The Conversation, where they note that rural communities have been shaped by simplified (and often inaccurate) narratives about politics, poverty, opportunity, and decline. They break down six of the most common myths and explain what the data actually reveals about rural life in America today. The conversation in the podcast explores how these misconceptions influence media coverage, public policy, and even how rural residents see themselves.