Katherine Dentzman, PhD
Contact Email: katie.dentzman@wsu.edu
Contact Website: katherinedentzman.wordpress.com
Dissertation Title: ‘I would say that might be all it is, is hope’: Disruption, attachment, and farmers’ framing of herbicide resistant weeds
Dissertation Committee: Ray Jussaume (chair), Stephen Gasteyer, Wynne Wright, and Karen Renner
Dissertation: Katherine's dissertation stemmed from her participation in an interdisciplinary project with participants from seven universities across the US with specializations in economics, weed science, and sociology. They investigated the socio-environmental impacts of herbicide-resistant weeds and farmers’ management of these weeds in corn and soybean systems. Katherine's particular research on this project had three foci: 1) the role of master frames and socio-technical imaginaries in farmers’ decision making, 2) how the geographic distribution of herbicide weeds creates place disruptions leading to different kinds of weed management practices and environmental outcomes, and 3) the utility of a mixed methods framework for researching agri-environmental phenomenon from a sociological perspective. This project greatly enhanced Katherine's experience and familiarity with organizing and leading focus groups; developing, implementing, and analyzing surveys; and working with a diverse interdisciplinary research team. Her time on this project sparked a love of both qualitative and quantitative research, as well as interdisciplinarity. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Washington State University with Dr. Jessica Goldberger working on the transdiciplinary project 'Performance and Adoptability of Biodegradable Plastic Mulch for Sustainable Specialty Crop Production' under USDA Specialty Crop Research Initiative award 2014-51181-22382.
