Cynthia Mil Duncan

Background

Cynthia Mil Duncan was born in the United States.

Education

Cynthia Duncan attended Stanford University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. Later, she earned a Master of Arts degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Sociology in 1985 from the University of Kentucky.

Career

Cynthia Duncan began her career as a research director at the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development in Berea. Until 1989, she was director of the Rural Economic Policy Program at Aspen Institute.

Later, she joined the University of New Hampshire in Durham, where at first she served as an associate professor, then professor of sociology and department chair from 1989 to 2000. From 2000 to 2004 she served as the Ford Foundation’s director of community and resource development. At the Ford Foundation, she was responsible for a team of national and international leaders in the community development, youth, and environmental fields.

In 2004-11, Cynthia Duncan was a professor of sociology and founding director at Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire (Carsey School of Public Policy), an interdisciplinary research center focused on vulnerable families and sustainable development in rural America. Presently, she is a research director, Carsey Senior Fellow and a consultant to AGree, an initiative bringing together diverse interests to transform food and agricultural policy in the United States, and she speaks frequently about rural poverty and change in America.

In 1992 Duncan edited Rural Poverty’ in America, an interdisciplinary collection that draws on the research of various experts in the fields of social science. With Nita Lamborghini and Esther Pank, she wrote Young Families and Youth in the North Country: A Report to the Northern New Hampshire Foundation in 1993. Her book, Worlds Apart: Why Poverty’ Persists in Rural America came out in 1999. Duncan’s most recent writing Worlds Apart: Poverty and Politics in Rural America was published in 2014. She also has been a contributor to journals.

Achievements

• Cynthia Duncan is particularly known as the author of books and articles on poverty and development. Her book, Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America won the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award in 2001.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America

    (Over five years, sociologist Cynthia Duncan visited remot...)

    1999
  • Rural Poverty in America

    (Nine million people in the United States live in rural po...)

    1992
  • Worlds Apart: Poverty and Politics in Rural America 2014
  • Worlds Apart?: Dualism and Transgression in Contemporary Female Dystopids 2005

Membership

Cynthia Duncan was a member of social science advisory board.