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Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Health Sciences

Dr. Kaitlyn S. Alvarez Noli, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Health Sciences, holds a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs (College of Social Sciences and Humanities) and the Department of Health Sciences (Bouvé College of Health Sciences). She dedicates her research to inspiring change in communities that are disproportionately burdened by environmental harm. As an environmental justice scholar, Dr. Alvarez Noli confronts the ways local environmental disputes and public debate exclude the interests and concerns of marginalized groups and explores practices that can counteract this exclusion. Her current line of research examines the nuanced power relations in framing, coalition development, and advocacy involving farmworkers and intensive pesticide use.

Employing qualitative research methods, Dr. Alvarez Noli’s most recent project examined how stakeholders’ positionalities, claims, and rhetorical strategies around the legitimacy of pesticide use practices impact problem-solving efforts. She demonstrated how the dynamics of public debate reinforce racial inequality by ignoring farmworkers’ lived experiences and disregarding health disparities. Charitable foundations, such as The John Randolph Haynes Foundation, and research centers, such as the Newkirk Center for Science and Society at UC Irvine, have supported this research.

Dr. Alvarez Noli’s work has appeared in the International Journal of Science and Society, the Journal of Business and Economics, and Environmental Justice. Her article, “The Advocacy Campaign to Ban Chlorpyrifos: Pesticide Reform Under the Trump Administration,” explores grassroots advocacy campaigns to ban the hazardous insecticide chlorpyrifos and traces the Trump administration’s impact on campaign tactics and outcomes

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Kaitlyn’s Colleagues

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Barry Bluestone

Russell B. and Andree B. Stearns Trustee Professor Emeritus of Political Economy; Founding Director of the Dukakis Center; Founding Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs

Christopher Bosso

Interim Chair, Department of Political Science; Professor of Public Policy and Political Science

Joan Fitzgerald

Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs

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Brian Helmuth

Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy

Timothy Hoff

Professor of Management, Healthcare Systems and Public Policy

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Dietmar Offenhuber

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Art + Design

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John Portz

Professor of Political Science; Director, Master and PhD Programs in Political Science

Gavin Shatkin

Director, MS in Urban Planning and Policy & MA in International Affairs; Professor of Public Policy & Architecture

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Lori Gardinier

Director and Teaching Professor of Human Services; Senior Research Associate, Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy

Emily Mann

Emily Mann

Teaching Professor of Human Services; Senior Research Associate, Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy

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Richard L. O'Bryant

Director of the John D. O'Bryant African American Institute; Research Associate of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy; Advisory Board Member, Humanities Center

Alicia Sasser Modestino

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Economics; Research Director, Dukakis Center

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Daniel T. O'Brien

Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Criminology and Criminal Justice; Director, Boston Area Research Initiative; Director, PhD in Public Policy Program

Daniel Urman

Director of Hybrid and Online Programs in the School of Law; Director of the Law and Public Policy Minor

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Matthew C. Nisbet

Professor of Communication; Affiliate faculty in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs