Rachel Underwood

Graduate Student

Rachel Underwood received her B.A. in Art Education from Florida State University, with a concentration on Photography and a minor in French. Broadly speaking, her research examines political and moral frames of homelessness in the United States. Rachel’s master’s thesis centered the experience of identity reclamation amongst women living in a supportive housing program. Her current work uses mixed methods and a combination of political economy and social movements theory to investigate social outcomes of discourse and framing on the experience of homelessness.

Rachel is also dedicated to "desire-based" storytelling and the dissemination of research through alternative channels, such as digital media. Rachel has been selected as a Meharry-Vanderbilt Community Engaged Research Core (CERC) Community Scholar (2018-2019), a Public Scholar with The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, & Public Policy (2019-2021), and a Mellon Graduate Fellow in Digital Humanities (2020-2021). She is currently an instructor with the Certificate in College Teaching program at Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching (2021-2022) and served as the President of the Sociology Graduate Student Council (2021-2022).