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

Degrees

  • MA
    Sociology
  • MA
    English
  • BA
    English

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
Danielle Koonce
Email
dkoonce5 [at] umd.edu