Belal Hossain
Graduate Teaching Associate
Bio
I am a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Oklahoma State University. I earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and a master’s degree in sociology at Middle Tennessee State University, USA. Broadly, the area of my expertise includes environmental sociology, social inequality, and quantitative methods. I study the political economy of global environmental change, environmental racism, disaster, food security, and public health. To date, I have published 5 journal articles and a book chapter that is forthcoming. My work has been published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Hydrological Sciences Journal, Sustainability, Geocarto International, and Journal of Affective Disorders.
Currently, I have three distinct but interrelated research agendas. First, my research examines the ways in which political-economic dynamics at the global and regional scale affect various forms of environmental sustainability and human well-being including but not limited to water resources, biodiversity, ecological footprint, climate change, food security, and public health. Second, I investigate how coastal communities in Bangladesh, especially vulnerable social groups, disproportionately shoulder the socio-economic and health burdens of climate change and natural hazards. Third, I study sustainability and environmental justice, focusing on health disparities in the United States. For each of these projects, I work with a different set of collaborators including environmental sociologists, geographers, epidemiologists, political scientists, and so on. Currently, I am working on several research papers and will continue to address research questions associated with these broader agendas.
In my research, I employ, depending on the specific data structure, a wide array of quantitative techniques including multivariate regressions, categorical data analysis, longitudinal data analysis, multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling, and spatial statistics. Not only do I utilize quantitative techniques, but also, I conduct research on statistical methods, particularly how to develop empirical tests and theoretical justification so that social science researchers can follow scientifically-informed general guidelines for data-generating process and model selection as opposed to arbitrary decisions.
Education
- B.S. in Sociology, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2012
- M.A. in Sociology, middle Tennessee State University, 2017
Research Interests
- Environmental Sociology
- Political Economy of Environmental Change
- Social Inequality
- Climate Change and Disaster
- Water Resources and Society
- Public Health
- Quantitative Methods
- Social Theory
- Environmental Racism
- Food Security