Research

I study the political economy of global environmental change, environmental racism, disaster, food insecurity, public health, and quantitative methods. Currently, I have three distinct but interrelated research agendas. First, my research examines the ways in which political-economic dynamics at the global and regional scale affect various forms of environmental sustainability and human well-being including but not limited to water resources, biodiversity, ecological footprint, climate change, food security, and public health. Second, I investigate how coastal communities in Bangladesh, especially vulnerable social groups, disproportionately shoulder the socio-economic and health burdens of climate change and natural hazards. Third, I study sustainability and environmental justice, focusing on health disparities in the United States. For each of these projects, I work with a different set of collaborators including environmental sociologists, geographers, epidemiologists, political scientists, and so on. Currently, I am working on several research papers and will continue to address research questions associated with these broader agendas.

In my research, I employ, depending on the specific data structure, a wide array of quantitative techniques including multivariate regressions, categorical data analysis, longitudinal data analysis, multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling, and spatial statistics. Not only do I utilize quantitative techniques, but also I conduct research on statistical methods, particularly how to develop empirical tests and theoretical justification so that social science researchers can follow scientifically-informed general guidelines for data-generating process and model selection as opposed to arbitrary decisions.