About Ken Kolb, PhD
Public policy scholar | James Beard Award finalist
Award-winning author | Community-based researcher
Ever since returning from the Peace Corps to finish his PhD in Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kolb has spent the past 20 years conducting community-based research.
He analyzes social problems with the goal of proposing practical solutions that harness readily available resources.
By conducting in-depth interviews and spending time with neighborhood groups, Kolb seeks to empower the people he studies by providing them with the data they need to convince policymakers to take their complaints seriously.
His first book, Moral Wages: The Emotional Dilemmas of Victim Advocacy and Counseling (2014) provides a vivid depiction of what it is like to work inside an agency that assists victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
His second book, Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate (2022), uses research from his current city, Greenville, SC, to challenge long-held myths and misconceptions about food deserts.
Ken Kolb is an expert on social inequality, community development, and pragmatic solutions to persistent social problems. He is currently a professor and chair of sociology at Furman University in Greenville, SC.
Ken is passionate about engaging in meaningful, fact-based research that informs smart and equitable policy decisions.
