
Contact Information
720 S. Wright St.
MC-454
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Brian Dill is associate professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds affiliate positions in the Department of Geography & Geographic Information Science, the Center for African Studies, and the Center for Global Studies. Brian currently serves as the Chair of the Sociology of Development section of the American Sociological Association and as the Secretary/Treasurer for Research Committee 09: Social Transformations and the Sociology of Development of the International Sociological Association.
Research Interests
Sociology of Development
Global and Transnational Sociology
Political Sociology
Research Description
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.
Education
PhD., University of Minnesota
Courses Taught
Soc 122: Africa in World Perspective
Soc 161: Introduction to Poverty
Soc 226: Political Sociology
Soc 364: Impacts of Globalization
Soc 561: Development Theories
Soc 596: Global and Transnational Sociology
Global Studies 350: Poverty in a Global Context
Global Studies 450: Poverty Interventions and Evaluation
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, Sociology
Associate Professor, Center for African Studies
Affiliate, Geography and Geographic Information Science
Associate Professor, Center for Global Studies
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Dill, B. J. (2013). Fixing the African State: Recognition, Politics, and Community-Based Development in Tanzania. (Africa Connects). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281418
Khalil, H., & Dill, B. (2018). Negotiating statist neoliberalism: the political economy of post-revolution Egypt. Review of African Political Economy, 45(158), 574-591. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2018.1547187
Dill, B., & Aminzade, R. (2017). Historians and the Study of Protest. In C. Roggeband, & B. Klandermans (Eds.), Handbook of Social Movements Across Disciplines (pp. 141-183). (Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57648-0_6
Dill, B. (2010). Community-based organizations (CBOs) and norms of participation in Tanzania: Working against the grain. African Studies Review. 53(2):23-48.
Dill, B. (2009). The Paradoxes of Community‐based Participation in Dar es Salaam
Development and Change. 40(4):717-743.
Recent Publications
Dill, B. (2025). How Institutional Layering Shapes Collaborative Governance: An Examination of Forest Collaboratives in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Sociology Compass, 19(2), Article e70045. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.70045
Schreiber, K. L., Rodríguez, L. F., Witmer, A. P., & Dill, B. (2019). Understanding and incorporating stakeholder perspectives in international engineering: A phrase mining analysis. Paper presented at 2019 ASABE Annual International Meeting, Boston, United States. https://doi.org/10.13031/aim.201901425
Dill, B. J., & Khalil, H. (2018). Financing Sustainable Development? How International Tax Reform is Failing Africa. In J. L. De Maio, S. Scheld, & M. Woldeamanuel (Eds.), Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa: Problems, Perspectives, and Prospects (pp. 91-108). Lexington Books.
Khalil, H., & Dill, B. (2018). Negotiating statist neoliberalism: the political economy of post-revolution Egypt. Review of African Political Economy, 45(158), 574-591. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2018.1547187
Dill, B., & Aminzade, R. (2017). Historians and the Study of Protest. In C. Roggeband, & B. Klandermans (Eds.), Handbook of Social Movements Across Disciplines (pp. 141-183). (Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57648-0_6