Research and Teaching
Broadly speaking, all my multi-disciplinary research and teaching efforts focus on mitigating structural inequality and uncovering how the multiplicative effects of identities such as class, race, ethnicity, or gender (among other identities and social positions) combine with sociopolitical and historical contexts to produce unequal outcomes.
I feel extraordinarily privileged and grateful to be doing the work I do. I am aware that through many privileges such as the luck of being born White and able-bodied in America, I have been given the space to do work I find meaningful.
Research
Generally, I consider myself a community and cultural sociologist who focuses on aspects of the structural determinants of the social determinants of health and the implications of cultural narratives. While completing my doctorate at the University of New Hampshire, I was awarded a five-year Community, Health, and Environment Fellowship. After almost ten years of teaching full-time at the university level until 2023, I’ve made the transition to research and program evaluation. I am currently a senior researcher at J.G. Research and Evaluation based in Bozeman, Montana.
Examples of research projects I work with, or have worked with, at J.G. Research and Evaluation https://jgresearch.org/ include a research project evaluating culturally-adapted interventions to promote wellness among urban American Indian communities, a community-based participatory research project in partnership with Buncombe County Partnership for Children focused on examining barriers to enrollment in North Carolina Pre-K, developing a survey for a statewide needs assessment of Montana, and the State Opioid Response in Montana.
PUBLICATIONS:
Ormsbee, Rachel C., Winchell, Ashtyn, English, Jenny, Martian, Allie, Craig, Molly, Michaels, Nikki, Haab, Amanda, Girardot, Abigail, Winter, Lauren, Reed, Penelope, Hendricks, Clare, Gaarsland, Alison, D’Amico, Elizabeth, Southworth, Alysah, Blevins, Lilyannna, Saam, Tricia, and Cox, Genevieve. (2024) “Undergraduate student process reflections on utilizing photovoice to learn principles of feminist research”. Feminist Pedagogy
Rink, Elizabeth, Mike Anastario, Malory Peterson, Paula FireMoon, Olivia Johnson, Ramey GrowingThunder, Adriann Ricker, Shannon Holder, Genevieve Cox, and Julie A. Baldwin. (2023). “Baseline results from Nen ŨnkUmbi/EdaHiYedo: A Randomized Clinical Trial to Improve Sexual and Reproductive Health Among American Indian Adolescents”. Journal of Adolescence ;1-16. DOI: 10.1002/jad.12158
Cox, Genevieve R. and Green, Brandn. (2022). Lived experience in the Montana behavioral health crisis response system. JG Research and Evaluation. DOI: 10.36855/Crisis.2022
Cox, Genevieve R., Paula FireMoon, Mike Anastario, Adriann Ricker, Ramey GrowingThunder, Julie Baldwin, and Elizabeth Rink. (2021). “Indigenous Standpoint as a Theoretical Framework for Decolonizing Social Science Health Research with American Indian Communities”. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. 17(4):460-468. doi:10.1177/11771801211042019
Cox, Genevieve R., Michael P. Anastario, Paula FireMoon, Adriann Ricker, and Elizabeth Rink. (2021). “Narrative Framing of Sexual and Reproductive Health Consequences of Historical Trauma as Choice Over Structure in an American Indian Community.” Sociology of Health & Illness. (Included within Black Lives Matter: Extended Special Section) 43(8):1774-1788. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.13355.
Rink, Elizabeth, Michael Anastario, Olivia Johnson, Ramey GrowingThunder, Paula FireMoon, Adriann Ricker, Genevieve Cox, Shannon Holder. (2020). “The Development and Testing of a Multi-Level, Multi-Component Pilot Intervention To Reduce Sexual and Reproductive Health Disparities in a Tribal Community.” Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work
Cox, Genevieve R., Corinna Jenkins Tucker, Erin Sharp, Karen Van Gundy, and Cesar Rebellon. 2014. “Practical Considerations: Community Context in a Declining Rural Economy and Emerging Adults' Educational and Occupational Aspirations.” Emerging Adulthood. 2 (3): 173-183.
Tucker, Corinna Jenkins, Genevieve R. Cox, Erin Sharp, Karen Van Gundy, Cesar Rebellon, and Nena Stracuzzi. 2013. “Sibling Proactive and Reactive Aggression in Adolescence.” Journal of Family Violence. 28(3):299-310.
Cox, Genevieve R. 2011. “Poor Women with Sexually Transmitted Infections: Providers’ Perspectives on Diagnoses.” Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care. 11(2).
Cox, Genevieve R. and Corinna Jenkins Tucker. 2011. “No place like home: Place and community identity among North Country youth.” New England Issue Brief No. 24. January, 2011. The Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire: Durham, NH.
Tucker, Corinna Jenkins and Genevieve R. Cox. 2011. “Coos teens’ view of their family economic stress tied to quality of relationships at home.” New England Issue Brief No. 28. October, 2011. The Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire: Durham, NH.
Teaching
As a full-time Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Health & Human Development and in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Montana State University, I taught classes including the Ethic of Care, Program Evaluation for Community Health, Drugs and Society, Urban Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Feminist Contributions to Community Research, and Human Sexuality. I’ve also been a full-time Lecturer in Sociology at the University of New Hampshire and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Southern Maine Community College. I currently teach part-time for Southern Maine Community College and have stayed on in a part-time capacity teaching at Montana State University.
Other courses I’ve taught: Introduction to Sociology, Marriage and Family, Critical Thinking About Social Issues, Urban Sociology, Art in Society, Environment and Society, Social Problems, and Sociological Theory.
Research with Indigenous Communities
Promoting Wellness Among Native Americans in Urban Areas (2024-2026)
In August 2024, JG Research & Evaluation and our partner the Montana Consortium for Urban Indian Health (MCUIH) was awarded an Other Transaction Award from the Native Collective Research Effort to Enhance Wellness (NCREW) Program (10T2DA061065) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This NIH program seeks to address overdose, substance use, mental health, and pain in American Indian communities. I am a research scientist on this project.
MCUIH is a non-profit dedicated to technical and educational support for the Urban Indian Organizations (UIOs) and their Centers across Montana. The goal of our project is to support research into opioid use and integrated healing approaches in Urban Indian populations and provide insight into the efficacy of evidence-based and culturally integrated programs for opioid and methamphetamine use disorders and chronic pain. The project has three main goals: 1) Improve population health surveillance data and clinical data to identify health gaps and disparities among Urban Indian populations in Montana; 2) Adapt evidence-informed interventions to address substance use disorders for Urban Indian populations; and 3) Pilot culturally adapted interventions and assess their efficacy.
Nen ŨnkUmbi/EdaHiYedo (“We Are Here Now”) (2018-2023)
From 2018 to 2021, I managed an R01 research project funded by the National Institutes of Health entitled Nen ŨnkUmbi/EdaHiYedo (“We Are Here Now,” or N/E. NIH Award: R01MD012761) on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in rural northeast Montana. N/E is a multi-level, multi-component sexual and reproductive health (SRH) intervention using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework. N/E is based on Fort Peck tribal members’ desire to implement a holistic SRH intervention for AI youth.
Dissertation work
I wrote my dissertation on the importance of creating community cohesion in modernity, even amidst mobility and disintegrating relations of trust. I focused on arts communities (mainly those folks who attend the arts festival Burning Man) on the American West Coast. A trivial kind of research topic, according to some. But I disagree. Art gives us something to live for, a way to express what’s inside us, and ultimately a way to connect with others. And this is a similarity across many cultures, societies, and countries. Moreover, community cohesion and recognizing the importance of taking care of our most vulnerable populations goes hand in hand with community health and policies that work to mitigate inequality.
