Holly A. Foster
ABF Visiting Scholar 2016
Holly Foster is a Professor of Sociology and Chancellor EDGES Fellow at Texas A&M University and an Affiliated Scholar at the American Bar Foundation.
Her research (with John Hagan) is on the myriad influences of parental incarceration on children’s outcomes, including the concept of ‘social exclusion’ or disconnection from major social institutions including schooling, housing, civic participation and health care. She also researches the correlates and consequences of children’s exposure to violence. Her third area of research investigates the social exclusion of women in prison and the countervailing processes families engage in when circumstances permit. Dr. Foster has published in the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Problems, the Annual Review of Sociology, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Sociology of Education, Social Science & Medicine and Law and Society Review. She has been co-investigator on five NSF grants and one NIH grant. In 2016, Foster wrote a commissioned white paper for the National Institute of Justice in a published volume on the conditions of confinement in restricted housing (e.g., solitary confinement) in American prisons. Hagan and Foster received a best publication award for their Social Forces article from the American Sociological Association’s section on Mental Health. Foster received her doctorate from the University of Toronto and completed interdisciplinary post-doctoral training at Columbia University and Carnegie Mellon University.