Nicholas Baxter Email & Phone Number

I am an assistant professor of sociology at Indiana University Kokomo. I am interested in environmental sociology, urban/community, social movements, cultural sociology, and qualitative research methods. I am committed to teaching and mentorship and have experience teaching courses including introduction to sociology, social problems, environmental sociology, urban sociology, social movements, social theory, and research methods at a variety of institutions.My research lies at the intersection of culture, community, and the environment. I am specifically interested in environmental and economic sustainability in rural and urban communities, the interplay of social and environmental change, and the role of place, space, and the environment in collective social action. My dissertation is an ethnographic case study of a Mississippi River island community struggling with cultural, economic, and environmental changes. I carefully examine aspects of community development and adaptation, environmental sustainability, and environmental change to understand the cultural politics of environmental change in the community. I observe the intragroup conflicts among community members as the community becomes increasingly focused on river traffic and tourism. I focus on the micro-level sensory experiences of river life and the ways these connections attune residents to environmental change while simultaneously making them susceptible to those changes. I conceptualize the micro-level patterns that organize the reciprocal relationship between the residents’ culture and the environment to shed light on the ways human community and nature’s ecology is co-constructed. Understanding these patterns will tell us about the myriad interconnections between community development and environmental transformation and provide insights into human organization and environmental sustainability.

Listed skills include University Teaching, Public Speaking, Higher Education, Microsoft Office, and 21 others.