PSTC | Postdoctoral Research Associate

Kathryn is a sociologist whose research examines how environmental hazards influence migration patterns, housing access, and the built environment, with a special focus on wildfires. As a Postdoctoral Research Associate, Kathryn is supporting the creation of a nationwide Dataset on Environment-Migration Systems and conducting analysis on hazard-mobility relationships in the United States.

Selected Publications: 

McConnell, K. “‘The Green New Deal’ as partisan cue: Evidence from a survey experiment in the rural U.S." Environmental Politics (2022).

McConnell, K., Braneon, C., Glenn, E., Stamler, S., Mallen, E., Johnson, D.P., Pandya, R., Abramowitz, J., Fernandez, G. and Rosenzweig, C. “A quasi-experimental approach for evaluating the heat mitigation effects of green roofs in Chicago, Illinois.” Sustainable Cities and Society 76 (2022).

Farrell, J., Burow, P., McConnell, K., Bayham, J., Whyte, K., and Koss, G. “Effects of land dispossession and forced migration on Indigenous peoples in North America.” Science 374, no. 6567 (2021).

Mueller, J. T., McConnell, K., Burow, P. B., Pofahl, K., Merdjanoff, A. A., Farrell, J. “Impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on rural America.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 228, no. 1 (2021).

Scholarly Interests

Environmental migration, climate change adaptation, spatial inequality, disasters, built environment