Box 1916

Maxcy Hall

112 George Street

Providence, RI 02912

Telephone: (401) 863-2367

Fax: (401) 863-3213

Sociology@brown.edu

 

411 Maxcy Hall
401-863-1942 (phone)
401-863-3213 (fax)
Leah_Vanwey@brown.edu

Ph.D. University of North Carolina

Areas of Interest:
Household Demography, Migration, Population and Environment

Associate Professor Leah VanWey is a household demographer and a multimethod researcher. She studies processes of migration and household livelihoods, primarily in developing countries. Leah completed her PhD at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina. She comes to Brown from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where she was affiliated with multiple research centers, including the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change (CIPEC), the Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT), and the Population Institute for Research and Training (PIRT), where she served as acting director from 2004-2005. Leah studies population and environment relationships in the Brazilian Amazon, using in-depth interview and social survey data linked with satellite imagery. She is eager to expand that work in collaboration with colleagues at Brown University and at the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory. She also works on the linkage between community forestry institutions, migration, remittances and community economic development in rural Oaxaca, Mexico, using in-depth interview data, ethnographic data and satellite imagery. Another topic of interest is the relationship between elderly migration, intergenerational transfers of wealth, and the distribution of wealth in the United States.