As a doctoral candidate, I enjoy thinking about the connections and relationships between race and space, particularly rural spaces and how these relationships contribute foundationally to many broad themes in sociology. I am also interested in understanding contemporary Black resistance movements, particularly Black Lives Matter and its organizational shifts and societal reach. Currently, I am doing my dissertation research on understanding how rural communities engage in Environmental Justice.
In my free time, I enjoy learning new things, creative writing, reading, travelling nationally and abroad, and spending time with my family and friends.
Areas of Interest
- Race, Environmental Justice, Social Movements, Political Sociology
CV: DKoonceCV333.31 KB
Personal Website
Degrees
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MASociology
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MAEnglish
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BAEnglish
Research
- Co-Author of article, “Renewable Ruses: Bioenergy Development in North Carolina’s Coastal Plains, September 2021
- Co-Author of article, “On Transfer Student Success: Exploring the Academic Trajectories of Black Transfer Engineering Students from Community Colleges”, June, 2019
- Editing and Writing Contributor to Contexts, an American Sociological Association publication, 2016-2018
- Presented paper entitled, “The American Nuclear Reactor that Disappeared but is Still in Plain Site” at the Society for Applied Anthropology Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 2014
- Presented paper presentation “The College Syllabus: Exploring a Systematic Impasse” at the Southern Sociological Society, New Orleans, March 2015
- Presented paper entitled, “Give Me That Old Time Religion, Called Protests” at the 2015 American Sociological Association in Chicago, IL, August , 2015
Member of SisterMentors, a mentoring organization for girls and women of color.
Volunteer community organizer for EJCAN, Environmental Justice Community Action Network

Email
dkoonce5 [at] umd.edu