skip navigation

This page looks better in modern browsers. Please upgrade.

Brown Home Brown Home Brown Academics

Nancy Luke

204 Maxcy Hall
401-863-2243 phone
401-863-3213 fax
Nancy_Luke@brown.edu

Spring 2008 Office Hours:
Tuesday 2:30-4:00pm

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania

Brown University Research Profile Page

Areas of Interest:
Social demography, marriage and family, gender, reproductive health, Africa and South Asia

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Luke is a social demographer whose research focuses on the impact of social organization on health and well-being, particularly among women in developing countries. She holds a dual PhD in sociology and demography from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Luke’s current research examines how community institutions, such as marriage, caste, and economic exchange, affect individual and couple behavior, including sexual relations and HIV risk in Kenya and intimate partner violence in India. Dr. Luke’s work is interdisciplinary, incorporating theoretical and methodological insights from sociology, anthropology, economics, and public health. She has designed and directed several large-scale surveys as well as conducted qualitative studies in Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia, India, and Vietnam.

Dr. Luke presently serves as Principal Investigator of an NIH-funded project that aims to improve quantitative methods for the collection of sexual behavior data in Kenya. Using a lifecourse approach, Dr. Luke and colleagues will construct retrospective relationship histories for young female and male respondents and interview these respondents’ romantic and sexual partners to create a unique matched non-marital partner sample. Data collection took place in summer 2007.

In support of Dr. Luke’s research, she has received grants from the National Institutes of Health, the World Bank, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Dr. Luke’s research has appeared in Economic Development and Cultural Change, Population and Development Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Development Economics, Studies in Family Planning, and Violence Against Women among other journals and edited volumes.

Selected Publications:

Nancy Luke.  “Migrants’ Competing Commitments:  Sexual Partners in Urban Africa and Remittances to the Rural Origin.”   Under review.

Nancy Luke and Kaivan Munshi.  “Women as Agents of Change:  Female Income and Mobility in Developing Countries.”  Under review.

Elisabeth Abbott and Nancy Luke.  “Local Hierarchies and Distributor (Non)compliance: A Case Study of Community-based Distribution in Rural North India.”  Under review.

Nancy Luke.  2008.  “Economic Status, Informal Exchange, and Sexual Risk in Kisumu, Kenya.”  Economic Development and Cultural Change 56(2):375-396.

Nancy Luke and Kaivan Munshi. 2007. “Social Affiliation and the Demand for Health Services: Caste and Child Health in South India.” Journal of Development Economics 83(2):256-279.

Nancy Luke, Sidney Ruth Schuler, Bui Thi Thanh Mai, Pham Vu Thien, and Tran Hung Minh. 2007. "Exploring Couple Attributes and Attitudes and Marital Violence in Vietnam." Violence Against Women 13(1):5-27.

Nancy Luke. 2006. "Exchange and Condom Use in Informal Sexual Relationships in Urban Kenya." Economic Development and Cultural Change 54(2):319-348.

Nancy Luke and Kaivan Munshi. 2006. "New Roles for Marriage in Urban Africa: Kinship Networks and the Labor Market in Kenya." Review of Economics and Statistics 88(2):264-282.

Nancy Luke. 2006. "Local Meanings and Census Categories: Widow Inheritance and the Position of Luo Widows in Kenya." In Etienne van de Walle, ed. African Households: Censuses and Surveys. Armonk , NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

Nancy Luke. 2005. "Confronting the 'Sugar Daddy' Stereotype: Age and Economic Asymmetries and Risky Sexual Behavior in Urban Kenya." International Family Planning Perspectives 31(1):6-14.

Nancy Luke. 2005. "Investigating Exchange in Sexual Relationships in Sub-Saharan Africa using Survey Data." In Shireen J. Jejeebhoy, Iqbal Shah, and Shyam Thapa, eds. Sex without Consent: Young People in Developing Countries. London: Zed Books.

Nancy Luke. 2003. "Age and Economic Asymmetries in the Sexual Relationships of Adolescent Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa." Studies in Family Planning 34(2):67-86.

Nancy Luke and Susan Cotts Watkins. 2002. "Reactions of Developing Country Elites to International Population Policy." Population and Development Review 28(4):707-733.

Prof. Luke also has a webpage at the Population Studies and Training Center.