Anne M. Cafer

Anne Cafer, Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship, and Graduate Education

Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship, and Graduate Education
Assistant Professor of Sociology

205 Ventress Hall  |  662-915-7178 |  amcafer@olemiss.edu

Dr. Cafer holds a BSc in Molecular Biology and Sociology from Northwest Missouri State University, an MA in anthropology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a PhD in Rural Sociology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She joined the faculty in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology in the fall of 2016.

While serving as an assistant professor of sociology, Dr. Cafer co-founded the Community First Research Center for Wellbeing and Creative Achievement (UM CREW). This center works directly with communities in Mississippi to leverage institutional resources and expertise to build resilience using a CBPR approach. She also served as the director for UM’s Center for Population Studies (CPS) where she supported the center’s mission as a federal State Data Center to help communities access, analyze, and interpret public data for local and state decision-making.

Dr. Cafer’s research focuses on the theoretical and practical applications of community resilience. She works closely with rural communities to examine the ways in which various social, economic, and environmental systems interact to create (non)resilient communities. She is an interdisciplinary community-based participatory researcher (CBPR) by training and actively works with communities as co-investigators. Dr. Cafer is a Borlaug Fellow in Global Food Security and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.