Lisa Dodson

Dr. Lisa Dodson holds a Research Professorship in the Sociology Department at Boston College concentrating on race, class and gender. Her current ICYFP research focuses on low-wage jobs and family life, social mobility and parent/child care responsibilities, and the expanding paid care-workforce. She addresses “The high cost of cheap care” in a forthcoming article in in The American Prospect (September 2014) co-authored with Nancy Folbre. Dodson’s most recent book, The Moral Underground https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lisa-dodson/the-moral-underground/ was called a must-read by Time Magazine (http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1945359,00.html. She examines “Stereotyping Low Wage Mothers Who Have Work/Family Conflicts” 2013, Journal of Social Issues, exploring working-poor mothers’ views about how class and race influence employment policy and ignore critical care needs of children, disproportionately children of color. Dodson coauthored the policy report, funded by the Ford and Annie E. Casey Foundations on How Youth Are Put At Risk by Parents’ Low-Wage Jobs (2012) that examines the interaction of youth development, family stability, and parents’ low-wage jobs. Professor Dodson specializes in field-based research, conducted in collaboration with community organizations and national networks, to integrate existing knowledge with lived experiences of low-income people in the development of public policy. Her earlier book Don’t Call Us Out of Name: The Untold Lives of Women and Girls in Poor America (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/327378.Don_t_Call_Us_Out_of_Name ) integrated eight years of field-based research to uncover an alternative account of welfare reform, told from the perspective of hundreds of single mothers and their children. Lisa Dodson’s research has been funded by the Ford, Annie E. Casey, Kellogg, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. She has been interviewed and her research has been used by numerous popular and scholarly publications, includingThe New York Times,Huffington Post Live, The Boston Globe, Chronicle of Higher Education, The American Prospect, The Ed Show, Alternet, and YesMagazine. Dr. Dodson teaches courses on collaborative research methods, poverty in the US, and carework and inequality. In the past she has presented research findings in numerous US Congressional hearings and to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well academic, community, labor, and human service organizations around the country.