Brian Dill

I study the relational dynamics of uneven development. My research challenges the common idea that struggling communities are simply “left behind.” Instead, I see rural and former industrial places—such as timber-dependent communities in the Pacific Northwest—not as abandoned, but as deeply embedded in the same economic systems that generate growth elsewhere. Capitalism is relational: rural and urban places, prosperous and struggling regions, are interdependent. What changes over time is the nature of these connections and the value assigned to different places. In periods of economic restructuring, rural communities may become less central to dominant industries, shifting from sites of investment to sites of extraction or neglect, even as their fates remain tied to more prosperous regions.

My current projects develop the concept of networked ruralism, which examines rural redevelopment as part of multi-scalar economic, political, and social networks, and contribute to the emerging reparative turn in development. This approach begins from the recognition that prosperity and dispossession are co-produced—that the success of some places has often depended on the extraction of resources, labor, and opportunities from others—and asks how we might design futures that confront and repair those imbalances. Through comparative research and grounded fieldwork, I explore how communities can reconfigure their place in these networks and build more equitable forms of development.