Rate My Professor Shannon Bell

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.