I am thrilled to be a part of the Urban Institute’s inaugural cohort of equity scholars. I am excited by the opportunity to connect with a diverse group of researchers using different methods to produce high-quality scholarship that will inform policies aimed at enhancing racial equity in our society.
Dawn M. Dow is an equity scholar and principal research associate in the Center on Labor, Human Services and Population and the Office of Race and Equity Research at the Urban Institute. She engages in policy-oriented research on race, equity, and structural racism impacting families, broadly construed.
Dow is also an associate professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a faculty associate in the Maryland Population Research Center. She previously served as the Critical Race Initiative faculty director, which holds an annual symposium focused on a topic engaging systemic racism.
Dow's existing research examines how intersections of race, class, and gender impact the family, educational settings, the law, and political mobilization. She is the author of the award-winning book, Mothering While Black: Boundaries and Burdens of Middle-Class Parenthood. Mothering While Blackexamines African American middle-class and upper-middle-class mothers' approaches to parenting their children and their views and decisionmaking about work, family, and child care. Her work has appeared in journals including Gender & Society, the Journal of Marriage and Family, Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, Science Advances, and Mobilization.
Dow is a deputy editor for the Journal of Marriage and Family, she is an editor for its special issue on Transformative Family Scholarship: Theory, Practice, and Research at the Intersection of Families, Race, and Social Justice, and she is on the editorial board of Contexts.
Dow earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a juris doctor from Columbia Law School.
Urban experts are permitted and empowered to work and affiliate with outside organizations, whether serving on boards, volunteering their time, or providing advice and counsel. And Urban welcomes visiting scholars, nonresident or affiliated fellows who work for other organizations. These outside affiliations enrich our perspectives and our learning environment. We also require all paid and unpaid experts to disclose their affiliations to Urban leadership and follow rules governing their engagement to ensure transparency for audiences and independence of experts.