Current Projects

The Environmental Politics of Self‑Sufficiency

Dr. Ford’s main body of work examines the increasing popularity of self-sufficiency movements, including homesteading and prepping. Through ethnographic research methods, she considers the environmental politics of self-sufficiency, rooted in dominant threads of American culture, including the politics of race, gender and sexuality, colonialism, and political economy.

Emotions, Culture and Climate Change

What shapes people’s responses to climate change? In this body of work, Dr. Ford considers the central role emotions play in shaping responses to climate change that are culturally consistent with people’s existing worldviews.

Theorizing Environmental Sociology

What are environmental practices, and how does the way we conceptualize what is and isn’t “environmental” shape the way we do environmental sociology? In this body of work, Dr. Ford explores the legacy of environmental sociology’s relationship to movements, academic disciplines, and intellectual genealogies.

The Environmental Politics of Trust

Distrust in American institutions is at an all time low. This project asks, how do individuals and organizations with different political and cultural perspectives navigate responses to environmental risk that require government and corporate leadership, in the context of wide-spread feelings of distrust towards institutions?