About Lisa Dodson

Lisa is a professor of sociology at Boston College and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on poverty, work and family, and public policy. She has published numerous articles and policy papers based on collaborative research with people who are coping with economic hardship in the US. Dodson’s most recent focus is documenting the family effects of a deeply stratified economy that is undermining working families and the larger society. Currently, she is leading a study that is documenting barriers and successes of low-income mothers and children working with the Boston-based anti-poverty organization, the Crittenton Women’s Union.

Previously, Dodson was on the faculty at Harvard University and a Policy Fellow at the Radcliffe Public Policy Center where she wrote her first book Don’t Call Us Out of Name: The Untold Lives of Women and Girls in Poor America (Beacon Press 1999). The book explored the lives of low-income mothers raising children after welfare reform. Based on her research, Dodson has presented findings at US Congressional hearings and recently to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as in many community organizations, labor groups, and public school and health forums. In her earlier career, Dr. Dodson was the director of women’s health division for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, an obstetrical nurse, and labor union organizer.

Lisa Dodson’s new book The Moral Underground is featured in The American Prospect January 2010 and she will be discussing the book in numerous national radio shows over the spring of 2010.