Friday Fellow Feature: Dr. Maggie León-Corwin

Our Featured Fellow for August is Dr. Maggie León-Corwin, who graduated from the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University this spring!

Dr. León-Corwin joined the Bill Anderson Fund as a Fellow in 2018. She served as Newsletter Editor and member of the Collaborative Communities and Social Media Committees from 2018-2019, Secretary and Social Media Committee Chair from 2019-2020, and helped organize the Disaster Dash in 2021. In addition, through the Bill Anderson Fund, she served as a graduate research intern with the Disaster Research Center (DRC) during the summers from 2019 to 2021. Through her internship at DRC and exposure to the work of other fellows, Maggie developed a strong appreciation for interdisciplinary approaches to research regarding hazards, disasters, and environmental research.

Maggie has a BS in Applied Sociology and an MA in Sociology from Texas State University. She successfully defended her dissertation, entitled ‘Environmental Risk Perceptions of Shale Gas Development in Oklahoma and Colorado: A Quantitative and Spatial Examination,’ in April 2022. Her dissertation integrated theoretical perspectives from across the social sciences and used methods from sociology and geography to model environmental risk perceptions of shale gas development. Here, Maggie illustrated the value of synthesizing approaches across disciplinary silos and identified key tenets that shape environmental risk perceptions.

Currently, Dr. León-Corwin is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (IPPRA) at the University of Oklahoma. In this role, Maggie works with an interdisciplinary team that uses research to address societal problems posed by extreme weather and the changing climate, energy, and environmental policy. Dr. León-Corwin is committed to promoting interdisciplinary collaborations across the social sciences. To this end, she is working with her BAF Mentor, Dr. Steve Kroll-Smith, to co-edit a special issue of Sociological Inquiry on Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Climate Change.

In addition to a commitment to interdisciplinary research, Maggie is passionate about producing social justice-oriented research and has developed lines of inquiry concerning environmental justice, social movements, and incarceration. She strives to create accessible and publicly available research, engaging with a broad audience by promoting her work outside traditional academic venues. Thus far, this has been done through collaborations with advocacy groups, public-facing speaking engagements, and participation in podcasts/guest media submissions. Dr. León-Corwin looks forward to continuing these initiatives throughout her career.

You can find Maggie’s publications here and connect with her on LinkedIn here.

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Environmental Justice, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Hazards/Disasters Research.