DEIRDRE ÁINE OAKLEY, PH.D. is an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Georgia State University and Chair of the Department’s Race and Urban Concentration. She is also a Sponsoring Scientist for the National Science Foundations (NSF) Minority Postdoctoral Research Program. Her research, which has been widely published in both academic and applied venues, focuses primarily on how social disadvantages concerning education, housing, homelessness as well as redevelopment, are compounded by geographic space and how urban policy initiatives can intervene. Since 2008, Dr. Oakley has been collaborating with Dr. Lesley Reid and Dr. Erin Ruel (both of Georgia State University) on two complementary National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NSF funded projects examining the impact of public housing elimination in Atlanta. Dr. Oakley provided Congressional Testimony concerning public housing preservation and the Neighborhood Choice initiative to the Financial Services Committee in 2010. Dr. Oakley is also a recipient of a HUD dissertation award grant and is a guest editor, along with Dr. Jim Fraser (Vanderbilt University) and Dr. Diane Levy (The Urban Institute), on a Cityscape symposium concerning public housing transformation and mixed income initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic, which was published in July 2013.

Dr. Oakley earned her bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College, and her master’s degree and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany.