Dr. Beth Mitchneck is currently Professor Emerita in the School of Geography & Development at the University of Arizona. She has held numerous administrative positions including, most recently, vice provost for faculty success at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and at the University of Arizona associate dean for academic affairs of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, interim vice provost for academic affairs, interim dean, and Faculty Associate to the Provost for the North Central Accreditation. She also was the lead program officer for the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE program to promote gender equity in academic STEM.
Dr. Mitchneck has a dual research focus on migration and displaced populations with an emphasis on former Soviet countries, Georgia and Ukraine, and on gender equity in STEM. She has served on national boards for the Social Science Research Council, the Kennan Institute and editorial boards for the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and Soviet Geography. She has received substantial funding from the NSF and other federal agencies. Her most recent publications include: “A Recipe for Change: Creating a more inclusive academy” in Science; “Displacing Blame: Divergent Accounts of the Georgia-Abkhazia Conflict” in Ethnopolitics; and “Traumatic Masculinities: Shifting Gender Roles Of Georgian IDPs From Abkhazia, in Gender, Place and Culture. She completed a Tucson Public Voices Fellowship of the OpEd Project in 2015-2016. She has published articles in the popular press about her research and gender issues in venues such as Foreign Affairs online, The Hill, and US News and World Report and is quoted in numerous articles about gender equity in STEM.
Citation analysis tools count the number of citations a research paper or author receives and serve as a proxy for research impact. Since research has shown the ways individuals choose what and who to cite are influenced by factors unrelated to the quality of the research, it is time to assess the efficacy of analysis tools. She will conduct a meta-synthesis of the literature on citation analysis and social influences over citation practices to document effects of gender and intersectionality. Indices reinforce barriers to advancement for scholars from underrepresented groups; publicizing inequities is the first step to addressing them.
