Elizabeth Talbert

Assistant Professor of Sociology
Howard Hall 128
515-271-2216
elizabeth.talbert@drake.edu

Dr. Elizabeth Talbert, Ph.D. M.P.P., is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Drake University, where she teaches research methods, family, poverty, and social policy courses. Dr. Talbert received her degree in Sociology from Johns Hopkins University in 2018, where she studied housing, family, work, and social inequality. Dr. Talbert's research focuses on issues of inequality in housing, work, family, policy, and poverty. At Drake, Dr. Talbert works with the Office of Community Engaged Learning to forward interdisciplinary and policy-relevant research and teaching that engages students in the community and pressing social questions. In partnership with the Polk county’s homelessness planning organization, Homeward, Elizabeth recently released the “Unsheltered Des Moines” report, a mixed-methods study about the barriers to shelter for people experiencing homelessness in Central Iowa. Dr. Talbert is also the recipient of a Russell Sage Foundation grant to study low-income mothers’ experiences of job loss and caregiving during the COVID-19 pandemic, and is currently collecting data in Des Moines and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dr. Talbert completed her post-doctoral research fellowship at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality and acted as the Field Director of the American Voices Project. She consults for various policy-relevant projects, including Recovery Network Iowa and the Substance Use in Iowa studies (research partnerships between Iowa State University and the Iowa Department of Public Health) and the Maryland Family Network's assessment of the cost of child care breakdowns to Maryland's annual economy. 

Dr. Talbert is originally from Ames, Iowa, and went on to earn a B.A. from Yale University in Psychology and Film Studies. After graduation, she joined the Teach for America Corps as a 4th Grade Teacher in New York City. She then completed her Master in Public Policy at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy where she worked on issues of gender, social welfare, and inequality through program analysis and mixed-methods surveys. Dr. Talbert lives in Des Moines and enjoys raising her three sons, spending time with friends and family, and traveling.