Asst Professor Quantitative Study of Gun Violence/ Gun Policy/ Gun Violence Prevention/Gun Stud

The Department of Medicine, Health, and Society (MHS) at Vanderbilt University invites applications for a joint tenure-track Assistant Professor position with MHS and Public Policy Studies (PPS), to begin fall semester 2022.  We seek an interdisciplinary scholar who will have a tenure-track home in MHS and teaching duties in both MHS and Public Policy Studies. Field of specialization is open, with preference for an interdisciplinary quantitative social scientist.

This position builds on growing connections between MHS and Policy.  We envision a junior scholar who will participate in and lead research, teaching, and grant proposals.  As such, areas of focus reflect areas of existing strength, student interest, and the future-focus of the field, including but not limited to:

• Strategies for gun violence prevention across political, racial, geographic divides;
• Community-based engagement in gun-violence-prevention/violence interruption;
• Best policies and practices for reducing gun related injury and death, including firearm suicide;
• The politics of U.S. firearms/attitudes and beliefs;
• The social contexts and meanings surrounding guns, gun violence, and gun markets;
• Global firearm policies, markets, implications;
• Media, technology, and messaging surrounding gun-violence prevention

Scholars who build on Vanderbilt’s existing strengths in firearm policy, the implications of firearm violence by race and/or sexual orientation, “structural” approaches to gun violence prevention (eg, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621002112), and the health politics/policies of the US South are especially encouraged to apply. The ability to obtain external funding is highly desirable, as is the ability to teach advanced quantitative methods and causal inference to undergraduate public policy studies majors. The university is home to a strong network of health and health policy researchers, and there are collaborative opportunities with multiple Arts and Science departments as well as in the School of Medicine.