Profile

Areas of interest: Environmental Sociology, Environmental Justice, Development, Political Economy, Theory, Social Movements, Mixed Methods Research.

My dissertation “Underdeveloping Appalachia: Toward A Critical Environmental Sociology of Extractive Economies,” uses mixed methods to examine the role of the coal industry in the reproduction of Central Appalachia as an internal periphery within the United States and the economic, ecological, and human inequalities this entails. Particularly important for analysis of the region’s underdevelopment are the class relations involved in unequal ecological exchange and the establishment of successive “modes of extraction.” My research also examines the "coal coalition" within the larger US policy-planning network and the significance of this network for understanding elite politics of energy and climate policy.