Contested Illnesses Research Group
Brown University , Providence RI

Dr. McCormick's work focuses on environmental and medical social movements, and activist collaboration with researchers. Her master’s thesis examined environmental breast cancer activists’ influence on science and governmental policy, and has been published in Sociological Forum (McCormick et al. 2003). As a part of her master’s research, Dr. McCormick worked at Silent Spring Institute conducting research on mechanisms of lay participation in science. Over the past five years, she has traveled extensively in Brazil, where she studied the anti-dam movement, and in the United States, where she has followed the work of activists in the environmental breast cancer movement. She has presented findings to public audiences through speaking engagements and a popular press article in Ms. Magazine (2002). Her dissertation work, which looks at these movements at an international level, has been funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Tinker Foundation. With that funding, she conducted fieldwork in Brazil by studying the anti-dam movement and how it works with researchers to contest science. In 2003, she was awarded an Environmental Leadership Program Fellowship, partially due to her work that bridged the barriers between activists and academics. Dr. McCormick is working on a documentary film profiling the experiences of three women with breast cancer and focusing on the environmental breast cancer movement. She is now an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State. There, she is pursuing international environmental research as well as writing a book on breast cancer and the environment.

Environmental Leadership Program
Henry Luce Fellowship Program