WCPC Faculty Affiliates
The WCPC provides a home for poverty scholars at the University of Washington. Faculty Affiliates participate in a variety of Center activities including small grant review panels and conference planning committees. They also provide the Center with linkages to other research and teaching centers on the UW campus and connections with national academic and policy organizations.
Arthur Acolin
Assistant Professor in the College of Built Environments. His field of research is housing economics with a focus on international housing policy and finance. His particular interest is on how housing market institutions and market designs affect household access to housing (tenure choice, housing consumption and mobility decision).
Scott Allard
Professor of Public Affairs, studies urban poverty, employment among low-skill workers, food security, and the accessibility and utilization of safety net programs.
Gunnar Almgren
Associate Professor, School of Social Work, is a demographer with particular interests in health care policy and practice; organizational practice; morbidity; mortality and social behavior; and educational and labor market outcomes at the transition to adulthood.
Katherine Beckett
Professor with a Joint Appointment with Law, Societies, and Justice Program in the Department of Sociology, researches socio-legal, criminal law and punishment, food, law and policy, culture and media, and gender issues.
Donald Chi
Assistant Professor in the Department of Dental Public Health Sciences at the University of Washington and an Investigator at the Northwest Center to Reduce Oral Health Disparities. Dr. Chi also has research interests in chronic conditions, neighborhood-level health effects, and preventive health care decision making.
Gregg Colburn
Gregg Colburn is an assistant professor of real estate in the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments. Dr. Colburn studies the housing outcomes of households with limited financial resources. This research includes projects focused on the effects of the Housing Choice Voucher program, the seasonality of family homelessness, the prevalence of housing cost burden, and the effects of housing stock expansion.
Kyle Crowder
Professor in the Department of Sociology with research interests that include environmental inequality, residential mobility and migration, racial and ethnic stratification, social demography, urban politics and development, and family composition and change.
Robert Crutchfield
Professor and Clarence & Elissa Schrage Fellow, Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences, researches criminology, race and ethnic relations, urban community; crime and labor markets.
Aimée Dechter
Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of Washington with research interests in family and households, demography, inequality, and methods and statistics.
Bonnie Duran
Associate Professor, School of Social Work and director of the Center for Indigenous Health Research. Her work focuses on designing treatment and prevention efforts that are empowering, culture-centered, effective and sustainable, with maximum public health impact.
Mark Ellis
Professor of Geography, researches immigration, internal migration, race, labor markets, and research methods.
Sarah Elwood
Professor in the Department of Geography, does work that intersects critical GIS, and urban and political geography.
Kim England
Professor, Department of Geography in the College of Arts and Sciences, researches issues related to urban social geographies; feminist geographies; and labor markets.
Rachel Fyall
Assistant Professor, Daniel J Evans School of Public Affairs, researches the influence of nonprofit organizations on the formation of public policy and the delivery of public services.
Amelia Gavin
Associate Professor, School of Social Work, is a political scientist who researches African-American women and depression; racial disparities in birth outcomes; and the etiological pathways to preterm birth and low birth weight from a life-course perspective.
James N. Gregory
Harry Bridges Endowed Chair of Labor Studies and Professor, Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences, researches twentieth century US history, labor history and radical labor movements; regionalism, both the West and the South; race and civil rights; inter-state migration.
Nancy Grote
Research Associate Professor, School of Social Work, is a developmental psychologist who researches Mental health of socio-economically disadvantaged women; culturally-relevant and engagement based interventions; maternal depression and birth outcomes.
Anjum Hajat
Assistant Professor, Epidemiology, researches social and enviornmental stressors that disproportionately impact disadvantaged populations and how these stressors impact cardiovascular disease (CVD), a research area that may have implications for understanding the underlying causes of health disparities.
Crystal Hall
Assistant Professor, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, is a social psychologist who researches judgment and decision making; social welfare policy; and poverty.
Alexes Harris
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences, researches race and ethnicity; juvenile justice systems; social stratification and inequality; and qualitative research methods.
Jerry Herting
Professor, Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research focus is on the sociology of health over the life course, looking at mental health and other health-related behaviors of adolescents/young adults, often focusing on the role of family, peer group, and neighborhood context on various outcomes.
Heather Hill
Associate Professor, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, studies how public and workplace policies influence low-income families in terms of family economic circumstances and child wellbeing.
Charles Hirschman
Boeing International Professor, Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, researches ethnic and social stratification; social mobility; immigration in the US and internationally; and educational and labor market outcomes at the transition to adulthood.
Marieka Klawitter
Professor, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, is an economist who researches family and employment policy; gender issues; sexual minority issues in demography and policy; policy evaluation; and state welfare programs.
Victoria Lawson
Professor and Thomas L. & Margo G. Wyckoff Endowed Faculty Fellow, Department of Geography in the College of Arts and Sciences, researches the social and economic effects of global economic restructuring in the Americas; and poverty in the rural Northwest.
Taryn Lindhorst
Associate Professor, School of Social Work, researches poverty and welfare reform; violence against women; health practice; death and grief; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered issues.
Mark Long
Professor, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, is an economist who researches low- income and minority youth; educational equity; race and inequality; policy structures and decision-making; public economics; labor economics; the economics of education; and applied econometrics.
Lynne Manzo
Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at University of Washington. As an Environmental Psychologist, Professor Manzo specializes in the study of the interrelationships between people and their physical surroundings.
Mauren Marcenko
Professor in the School of Social Work. Dr. Marcenko’s primary research and practice commitments are to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families, particularly those served by the child welfare and other public agencies.
Karin Martin
Assistant Professor, Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. Crime policy specialist whose areas of expertise are monetary sanctions, racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and decision-making in the criminal justice context.
Melissa Martinson
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, focuses her research on inequities in health and wellbeing throughout the life span, both in the United States and internationally.
Ross Matsueda
Blumstein-Jordan Endowed Professor, Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences, researches classical theories of crime, such as differential association, social control, and labeling; and rational choice theories.
Paula Nurius
Professor, School of Social Work. Her research focuses on the processes and effects of stress and trauma, particularly with respect to vulnerable and socially disadvantaged populations, early/preventive intervention, and fostering resilience.
Soojin Oh Park
Assistant Professor in Education at the University of Washington. Dr. Parks work seeks to inform public policies and educational practices that address systematic inequalities of early learning opportunities amoung children from low-income families and immigrant communities.
Margaret Pugh O’Mara
Associate Professor, Department of History in the College of Arts of Sciences, researches US politics and policy; urban and environmental history; and the US West.
Jennifer Otten
Assistant Professor, Department of Health Services in the School of Public Health, researches the impacts of food and nutrition public health policy on health behavior and obesity prevention and reduction.
Diana Pierce
Senior lecturer, School of Social Work, with a focus on how low-wage and part-time employment, unemployment insurance, homelessness and welfare reform impact women. Her research interests include the feminization of poverty, poverty measurement, welfare reform, and domestic violence.
LaShawnDa Pittman
Assistant Professor of American Ethnic Studies, has examined how low-income, urban custodial grandmothers cope with the demands of primary caregiving.
Jennifer Romich
Associate Professor, School of Social Work, combines the disciplines of economics, human development and social policy in her research on policy supports for low-income working households; income tax systems and the poor; household resources and decisions; mixed-methods research approaches.
Jennifer Stuber
Associate Professor, School of Social Work, has a health policy and management background and researches mental health policy; interventions to refute stigmatization; tobacco related health disparities; and social norms and the stigmatization of smoking.
Rebecca Thorpe
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences, researches national political institutions and power relations, with a particular emphasis on how institutional structures influence policymaking and regime development; and poverty.
Jacob Vigdor
Professor, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, is a labor economist with social policy expertise spanning education, immigration, housing, and racial and economic inequality.
Rebecca Walter
Assistant Professor, College of Built Environments. Her primary area of research is assisted housing, with a focus on expanding affordable housing opportunities for low-income households. She evaluates the policies and outcomes of the two largest federal assisted housing rental programs in the United States (the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and the Housing Choice Voucher program).
Karina Walters
William P. and Ruth Gerberding University Professor, School of Social Work, studies American Indian and Alaska Native health, mental health, alcohol and substance abuse; other wellness areas; and resilience against historical trauma and discrimination.
Thaisa Way
Landscape historian teaching history, theory, and design. In partnership with Margaret O’Mara (history), Kim England (geography), and Susan Kemp (social work), Dr. Way is developing the UW Cities Collaboratory, a collaborative work across the University and the City.
Suzanne Withers
Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, researches spatial demographic analysis and geographic information science to investigate spatial mobility over the life course.