Vanessa Parks

Vanessa Parks joined the Center for Population Studies in 2019 after completing her doctoral studies in sociology at Louisiana State University. Her work focuses on the relationships between social capital, health, and well-being among vulnerable populations in the context of both acute and slow-onset crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Hurricane Harvey, the Flint Water Crisis, and coastal land loss. Vanessa has been awarded the Roland Pellegrin Award from Louisiana State University and the Larry W. DeBord Award from the University of Mississippi, and she was named a Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Scholar for her work on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.