Ryan Parsons

Assistant Professor of Sociology and Southern Studies
Ph.D., Princeton University
Stratification, Race & Ethnicity, the American South, Ethnography, China
Lamar Hall 561  |  662-915-1540
parsons@olemiss.edu

Background

Ryan Parsons was born in South Carolina and quickly moved to the other side of the Deep South in south Mississippi. He received his B.A. in international studies and Chinese at the University of Mississippi and then moved to the United Kingdom, where he studied for an M.Phil. in development studies at the University of Cambridge (Darwin College). He returned to Mississippi and worked with the McLean Institute on a range of community development and community engagement projects. He enrolled in graduate school and received a Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Princeton University in 2022.

Research

In his research, Parsons explores how questions of space and race intersect to structure mobility opportunities, especially in rural and depopulated communities. His dissertation was a community study of Sunflower County in the Mississippi Delta, where he spent three years working with a cohort of young people who aspired to go to college. His teaching draws on these experiences as he helps students think critically about what it means to study a community, and in particular a community they’ve chosen to call home.