Karen Foster

Since 2014 I have held the Tier II Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Rural Futures for Atlantic Canada at Dalhousie University. In 2016 I founded the Rural Futures Research Centre (RFRC), which I continue to direct and am currently proposing to develop into a larger institute with facilities and collaborators in both Halifax and Truro. My CRC research draws on economic sociology, political economy, political ecology, rural sociology, life course studies and the sociology of work to offer a critical perspective on work, income, livelihood, community, sustainability and intergenerational relations in Atlantic Canada. Through numerous individual research projects over my tenure as Chair, I have developed expertise on how Atlantic Canadians make a living and how they feel about it; how they perceive relationships between environment and economy; what macro- and micro-level factors affect demographics and economic activity in rural communities; and the discourses that shape the practice and outcomes of rural community and economic development. I have extensive experience designing, implementing and analysing the results of telephone, online and paper surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and document analysis. The RFRC's facilities include the hardware (CATI - Computer-assisted telephone interviewing -stations, iPad library) and software (SPSS, Atlas.ti, Voxco) to conduct almost any kind of social research, and the centre typically employs 15 undergraduate and 5 graduate students while there are surveys 'in field.'