Postdoctoral Researcher (2023-present)
O'Donnell School of Public Health
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Connor.Donegan@UTSouthwestern.edu
I am a human geographer and a postdoc at the O'Donnell School of Public Health, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. In spring of 2023, I completed my PhD in Geospatial Information Sciences (GIS) at UT Dallas. Concurrent with my degree, I undertook a research assistantship and advisee role in cancer prevention research at UTSW. Previously I studied political economy and urban geography at University of British Columbia (MA, 2013) and University of Minnesota (BA, 2010).
My research falls into three overlapping areas of work:
Political economy of health
The main case study of my dissertation examines the evolution of the colorectal cancer (CRC) burden over the past two decades in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metropolitan regions. This period saw the diffusion of improved prevention technology, namely screening colonoscopy, in the midst of polarizing economic growth, demographic change, and expansive urbanization processes. This research is concerned with the ways that cancer inequalities have evolved in tandem with these social transformations.
Spatial statistics
I study spatial statistics and Bayesian modeling. My research in this area has led to a pair of open-source statistical software packages. One of them (surviel) is for modeling time trends in disease incidence or mortality rates, the other (geostan) provides a variety of methods and models for spatial data analysis and disease mapping. The latter incorporates computational methods I developed to speed up spatial autoregressive models in the Stan modeling language, plus other methods presented in my publications.
Social science methodology
My dissertation, titled Plausible reasoning and heuristic methodology in human geography: An invesitagtion of colorectal cancer incidence and inequalities in urban Texas, 1999--2019, engages with the methodological framework of plausible reasoning (PR) as developed by the likes of George Pólya and Harold Jeffreys. I am interested in how their writings on PR can contribute to methodology and study design in the social sciences, particularly for research pertaining to social structures and health.