Loka Ashwood

Loka Ashwood (born 1984 or 1985) is an American sociologist working at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a professor of community and environmental sociology. Her research focuses on rural communities and their issues. She is a 2024 MacArthur Fellow.

Her first book, For-Profit Democracy, investigated the relationship between rural American communities and the U.S. government through the lens of Burke County, Georgia and the construction of a nuclear power plant there.

Life Ashwood was raised in a farming family in Illinois. She graduated in 2009 from University of Galway with an ML.