fussell@wsu.edu
509.335.7516
Wilson Hall 253

Elizabeth Fussell
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Wisconsin-Madison, 1998

Curriculum Vitae | Webpage | Courses

Current Research Interests:

Elizabeth Fussell received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1998. From 1998 to 2001 she had a postdoctoral fellowship at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Fussell joined the Tulane faculty in Fall 2001. She has two main areas of research: international migration, specifically from Mexico to the United States, and the transition to adulthood from a demographic perspective.

Fussell's research in international migration focuses on migration from the northern border region of Mexico, where free trade and proximity to the Mexico-U.S. border have shaped the dynamics of migration, and the process of cumulative causation of migration from different types of places within Mexico and in other countries in Latin America. More recently she has begun interviewing Latino migrants who have arrived in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.

Fussell seeks to understand how social institutions structure the transition to adulthood in developing countries and in the United States historically. She has developed a new methodology, the entropy analysis of status heterogeneity in synthetic cohorts, which uses census data to show how school attendance, labor force participation, household membership, marriage, and parenthood combine to create distinct life course structures in different times and places. She is also working with Mary Waters on a project titled, Katrina and Its Aftermath in the Lives of Community College Students .

Recent Publications:

2007    Elizabeth Fussell. “Constructing New Orleans, Constructing Race: A Population History.” Journal of American History, Special issue titled, “Through the Eye of Katrina: Past as Prologue?” Edited by Lawrence Powell, Clarence Mohr, and Edward T. Linenthal.

2007    Elizabeth Fussell, Anne H. Gauthier and Ann Evans. “The Transition to Adulthood in Australia, Canada, and the United States: A Comparative Perspective.” European Journal of Population.

2007    Timothy Haney, James R. Elliott, and Elizabeth Fussell. “Families and Hurricane Response: Evacuation, Separation, and the Emotional Toll of Hurricane Katrina.” The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe, edited by David Brusma. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

2006    Jeannie Haubert and Elizabeth Fussell. “Explaining Pro-Immigrant Sentiment in the U.S.” International Migration Review. 40(3): 489-507.

2005    Elizabeth Fussell. “Measuring the Transition to Adulthood in Mexico: An Application of the Entropy Index.” Advances in Life Course Research 2005. Edited by Ross MacMillan. 9: 91-122.