简介

Dr. Allen teaches graduate courses in the social study of science and technology at Virginia Tech's Washington DC-area campus in Falls Church, VA. Most recently she has taught courses on: social study of science and technology, sociology of knowledge, public participation in S+T, qualitative research methods, and science, technology and social justice. She has two recent research projects that fall broadly within two interdisciplinary areas: 1) the political sociology of science and technology, and 2) community-based participatory environmental health. She is currently working on an NSF-funded project that examines the dynamics of citizens, science, regulation and environmental justice in heavily polluted regions in the U.S. and the EU (Italy and France). She is interested in how different national, cultural and institutional contexts condition the dynamics of citizen response to environmental problems and regulatory change. Additionally, she examines how citizens, organizations, and other non-traditional science institutions participate in the shaping of policy-relevant scientific and technical knowledge. Allen is also currently funded by the French Agency for Environmental and Occupational Health (ANSES) to develop, conduct, analyze, and disseminate a participatory environmental survey in two towns in a polluted industrial zone. Additionally the project will gather empirical data on civic styles of citizen engagement in France for comparison with the US and other EU nations. Previously, also funded by the NSF, Allen completed research that examined both the efficacy of, and the types of justice embedded in, NGO efforts in the rebuilding and repatriation of post-disaster New Orleans. Through comparative analysis of the rebuilding of three heavily flooded neighborhoods, she drew draw conclusions on what synergies and alliances were most successful and why. Allen received her Ph.D. in STS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1999. Prior to that she was both a professor and practitioner of architecture. Dr. Allen's New Orleans Research Project website can be found here: