About
I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. My research examines poverty, mobility, and inequality in rural America, with a particular focus on the U.S. South.
My work has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Research on Poverty, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
I received my PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Princeton University and an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge. I also hold BAs in International Studies and Chinese from the University of Mississippi.
Research
My research sits at the intersection of urban and rural sociology, stratification, and race. I use ethnographic and quantitative methods to understand how place shapes life chances, particularly for marginalized communities in the rural South.
Current Projects
- Rural Poverty and Mobility: My book project examines pathways to mobility—and barriers to it—in the rural Mississippi Delta.
- The Great Migration: Using linked census data, I study the long-run consequences of Black migration from the rural South (1910–1940).
- Disability and Place: With support from the Russell Sage Foundation and IRP, I examine how economic decline in rural areas shapes disability insurance claiming and economic precarity.
- Education and Mobility: I study how higher education operates as a mobility pathway in low-opportunity contexts, and the competing pull of home.
Publications
Book
Dreams Deflected: Race, Poverty, and Mobility in Rural America. Under advance contract, University of Chicago Press, Fieldwork Encounters Series.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
- 2025 Parsons, Ryan J. and Semonti Jannat. "The Impact of Parent Migration on Education Expenditures for Children in Rural China." Australian and International Journal of Rural Education 35(3): 30-48. [DOI]
- 2024 Parsons, Ryan J. "Neighborly Surveillance: The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and the Development of a Post-Jim Crow Ideological Apparatus." Surveillance & Society 22(3): 276-291. [DOI] Winner, 2024 SSN Early Career Researcher Prize
- 2023 Parsons, Ryan J. "Logics of Extraction and of the Valorisation of Culture: The Role of Post-extraction Investment in the Creation of Inequality in China." International Development Policy (16). [DOI]
- 2022 Parsons, Ryan J. "Moving Up to Move Out: Higher Education as a Mobility Pathway in the Rural South." RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(3): 208-229. [DOI]
- 2021 Parsons, Ryan J. "The Role of Transportation Development in Producing Spatial Inequality in China." Migration and Development. [DOI]
- 2021 Parsons, Ryan J. "Interpreting the American Caste System as Racialized Economic Performance." The American Sociologist 52(2): 367-389. [DOI]
Manuscripts Under Review
Working papers and replication materials available upon request.
- "Embodied Southern Whiteness, Racial Knowledge, and the Great Migration"
- "Depopulation, Institutional Survivorship, and Racial Inequality in Rural School Closure"
- "Pushed Out, Pulled Home: Black Return Migration to the Rural United States South and the Challenge of the Bionecropolis"
- With Emily Miller. "Economic Decline and the Disabling Role of Place"
- With Ellie Crane. "'On Our Own' or 'Together': Disability, Race, and Local Food Access in Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta"