Lisa Dodson

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Lisa Dodson has been affiliated with the Radcliffe Public Policy Center since 1996. She has worked as the co–principal investigator of the “Crossing the Boundaries” project, which focuses on the challenges low-income women face in managing the demands of work, family, and community roles. Currently, Dodson is working on two papers. The first, “Seeking the Ground Truth in Low-Income America: Data That Come in Whispers,” will explore the challenge that silent voice poses for gaining full knowledge about human development and building sound social policy in low-income and working class America. The second paper, “Interpretive Focus Groups: Analysis by the People Who Live the Lives Under Study,”  will use 10 years of research experience to outline a specific research methodology for engaging the people “under study”  as research analysts on the data about their lives, families, and the larger society.

The founder and former director of the Massachusetts State Department of Public Health’s Division of Women’s Health, Dodson was a senior researcher and program evaluator for Casa Myrna Vazquez, the largest battered women’s sheltering and support program in Massachusetts.

Dodson received the Emily Toth Book Award for ”best single-author study of America culture”  in 1999 and the Boston Authors Book Club’s Best Non-Fiction Boston Author Finalist in 1999 for her book Don’t Call Us Out of Name: The Untold Lives of Women and Girls in Poor America (Beacon Press, 1998). She earned her PhD from Brandeis University.