Linda Lobao is Professor of Rural Sociology, Sociology, and Geography at the Ohio State University. Her fields of specialisation include political sociology, community and regional development, and the sociology of agriculture. Recent areas of research include a focus on changes in the state, such as decentralization, and market changes and their impacts on inequality across regions, communities, and households. Linda’s research also addresses spatial inequality, gender and social change, rural and regional development. She has published over fifty journal articles and book chapters. She is a co-editor of a new book, The Sociology of Spatial Inequality. She also wrote Locality and Inequality: Farm and Industry Structure and Socioeconomic Conditions and co-authored Beyond the Amber Waves of Grain.

Linda has received competitive grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and various non-profit and state funding agencies. Linda was Deputy Editor of Rural Sociology and has served on the editorial boards of Demography, Environment and Planning A, and Rural Sociology. Linda was President of the Rural Sociological Society in 2002-3. Linda is a faculty affiliate of the John Glenn Institute of Public Policy, the Ohio State University, and her research has been used in Congressional testimonies and federal court cases.