Dr. Douglas Jackson-Smith

Background

Born in Boston, I grew up in Utah before doing my undergraduate work in California (Deep Springs College) and New York (Cornell). My three graduate degrees are all from the University of Wisconsin – a MS in Rural Sociology, MA in Agricultural Economics, and PhD in Sociology. I worked and did research in Nepal and Indonesia in the 1980s, and have raised sheep, chickens and livestock guard dogs since the early 1990s.

I moved to Ohio State in August 2016 after spending the last 15 years as a faculty member in the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology at Utah State University. Prior to that, I served as Co-Director of the Program on Agricultural Technology Studies (and faculty member with a joint appointment in Sociology and Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

My office and work team are based at the Ohio Agriculture Research and Development Center (OARDC) – OSU’s large agricultural research station based in Wooster, Ohio (90 miles northeast of Columbus, in the heart of Amish country).  There is a growing group of SENR faculty, graduate students, and post-docs based at the OARDC working on interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship and outreach related to social and environmental aspects of complex working landscapes. While my research and home are in Wooster, I regularly come to the Columbus campus to teach and meet with faculty, students, and colleagues.

Research Interests

I am broadly trained as a sociologist, with significant background in geography, economics, political science, and anthropology. I believe deeply in the value of using social science theory and mixed methods to address pressing problems in the United States and abroad. Throughout my career, I have sought to balance the importance of structural determinants of social outcomes with the notion that individual and collective actors have significant agency in determining their choices and behaviors. My work has spanned multiple, overlapping scales to better understand the relative contributions of individual, household, community, institutional, and national/global drivers of farm structural change, land use transformations, and environmentally-relevant behaviors.

I utilize a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data in my research, including extensive use of secondary data, mail and internet surveys, key informant interviews, and focus groups).  I have published research using multivariate statistical modeling as well as structured iterative analysis of qualitative data. I am particularly interested in finding ways to use geospatial technology and data to explore ways to integrate spatial processes and outcomes into my work.
Nearly all of my research is deeply collaborative and interdisciplinary, and my published work is targeted at journals and audiences across both social science and environmental science disciplines and outlets. I am increasingly interested in participatory and engaged models of scholarship, and seek opportunities to integrate the voices and experiences of farmers, citizens, and stakeholders in the design and use of scientific research.