Ken Kolb

Background

About Ken Kolb

I am Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Furman University with over 20 years of experience conducting community-based research by engaging with neighborhood groups and local organizations. I manage research teams to translate and visualize social data to foster policy change. I am an expert on food systems, gentrification, urban development, affordable housing, and gender violence. I specialize in collecting data via in-depth interviews, focus groups, participant observation, and media content analysis. I analyze how individual and group behavior is shaped by systemic inequalities, with a primary focus on the impacts of racism and sexism. I am the author of two books and numerous research articles. My first book focused on interpersonal violence and the second on food access. Most recently I led a data visualization team to provide the research for a team of investigative journalists from Gannett and the Greenville News to document racial displacement and gentrification in South Carolina. In addition to my research and teaching duties, I manage and evaluate faculty in my department.