Rate My Professor Shannon Bell

Shannon Elizabeth Bell is a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech, where she has served since 2017, first as Associate Professor from 2017 to 2022 and then promoted to full Professor in 2022. She also holds faculty affiliations with the Appalachian Studies Program, Global Change Center, and Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Kentucky in 2010, with concentrations in Lewis Honors College, Gender & Women’s Studies, and Appalachian Studies; an M.A. in Applied Community Change & Conservation from Future Generations University in 2005; an M.S.W. in Community Organizing and Social Administration from West Virginia University in 2004; and a B.S. in Biology and B.A. in Religion from Washington and Lee University in 2000, graduating summa cum laude. Prior to Virginia Tech, she was Assistant Professor from 2010 to 2016 and Associate Professor from 2016 to 2017 in the Department of Sociology at the University of Kentucky, with additional program faculty roles in Environmental & Sustainability Studies and affiliations in Women’s and Gender Studies and Appalachian Studies.

Professor Bell is an environmental sociologist and Appalachian studies scholar whose research and teaching focus on just energy transitions, the socio-ecological impacts of fossil fuel extraction and transport, environmental and climate justice, forest farming and wild harvesting traditions, and inequities in the wild-harvested herbal supply chain in Central Appalachia. She is the author of two award-winning books: Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2013), which received the Association for Humanist Sociology Book Award, and Fighting King Coal: The Challenges to Micromobilization in Central Appalachia (MIT Press, 2016), honored with the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award in Sociology & Social Work, the Society for Human Ecology Gerald L. Young Book Award in Human Ecology, and a Gold Medal from the Nautilus Book Awards. Her peer-reviewed publications include articles in Energy Research & Social Science such as “Toward Feminist Energy Systems: Why Adding Women and Solar Panels is Not Enough” (2022) and “Pluralizing Energy Justice” (2020), as well as in Rural Sociology and Environmental Sociology. She has received awards from the Rural Sociological Society, American Sociological Association Environment & Technology Section, and others, including the Virginia Tech Excellence in Research Award. Her engaged scholarship features an 8-month Photovoice project with women in southern West Virginia coal communities and ongoing initiatives like the Forest Botanicals Region Living Monument.