Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Fellow, Carolina Population Center
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Elizabeth Frankenberg is the Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is also an adjunct professor of public policy. After majoring in Geography as an undergraduate at UNC, Professor Frankenberg received an M.P.A. in 1989 from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she focused on international development. She earned her Ph.D. in demography and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, where she was mentored by Samuel Preston, Jane Menken, Herb Smith, and Andrew Foster.
Frankenberg joined UNC-CH in 2017 to direct the Carolina Population Center. Prior to that she was a professor of public policy at Duke University (2007-2017), an assistant and associate professor of sociology at UCLA (2001-2007), and a social scientist at RAND (1992-2001). She is currently serving as President-Elect of the PAA. Past PAA roles include serving as vice president, as a member of the Board of Directors, on the Publications Committee, and as a Deputy Editor of Demography. At CPC she has served as PI of center grants from NICHD and NIA, as well as director of the Population Sciences Training Program. She has mentored undergraduate, masters, and graduate students throughout her career, winning a mentoring award from Duke University in 2012.
Frankenberg studies shocks such as economic crises and disasters to observe their influence on human capital and resource investments at the individual, household, and community level. She has invested heavily in the design of interdisciplinary data collection projects and in the production of publicly available data to support population research. In collaboration with Duncan Thomas and Cecep Sumantri, Frankenberg has directed several large-scale longitudinal surveys in Indonesia, including the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) and the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), funded by grants from NIA and NICHD. More recently, working in North Carolina she fielded the Dynamics of Extreme Events, People, and Places (DEEPP) survey, to link exposure to recent extreme hurricanes to health and well-being in eastern North Carolina. All of these surveys integrate innovative measures derived from satellite imagery, computational models of flooding, and biomarkers with more traditional modes of survey research.
Frankenberg’s recent research has examined the impact of the Indian Ocean tsunami on psycho-social well-being, fertility, educational outcomes, mortality, and long-term health as a function of exposure to community destruction and trauma. With colleagues she has established links between land cover change, estimated by applying machine learning tools to high resolution satellite imagery, and short- and longer-term demographic change, including recovery, measured from survey and census data.