(Sociology, March 2023)
Thesis Title: The Social Effects of Climate Change – Adapting to Climate Change in Daily Life
Committee: Mary C. Waters (Chair), Jocelyn Viterna, Diane Davis (Harvard Graduate School of Design), and Beth Fussell (Brown University)
Initial Placement: Assistant Professor of Environmental Sociology, Vanderbilt University

Dissertation Abstract:
How do individuals perceive and manage climate change in their daily lives? How are relationships to land, home, and policy shifting in the changing climate? And, how does institutional context impact individuals’ climate change experience and response? I investigate these questions using qualitative methods to understand these shifts over time. For my dissertation and multiple papers, I immersed myself in ethnographic field sites in three climate stressed areas of the globe: rural Colombia, coastal North Carolina, and the informal settlements in the megacity of Lagos. I do not compare these sharply different contexts; rather, I combine the realities in each place to create a more nuanced picture of a global climate change experience.I focus on the roles of socioeconomic factors and governance institutions in creating the adaptation contexts within which the social consequences of climate change unfold. My interdisciplinary scholarship asks sociological questions while drawing on the fields of urban planning, environmental studies, human geography, and public policy. My research contributes to the subfields of environmental sociology, global and transnational sociology and intersects with research on migration, climate change, and inequality.