Lanora Johnson is a PhD Candidate in the University of Michigan Department of Sociology, a Rackham Merit Fellow, and a National Science Foundation fellow. Her research interests are in the areas of rural poverty and gender violence. Before graduate school, she received her bachelor’s degree in Government and Sociology at Morehead State University. In 2018, she collected 24 interviews with women living in Eastern Kentucky about their experiences with dating. She is currently working on a paper about how Eastern Kentucky’s economic disadvantage and shifting gender dynamics impact how women perceive risk while dating. Her dissertation study aims to understand how low-income and working-class people living in Central Appalachia survive back-to-back economic crises, and how these crises shape gendered processes in the region.
