Eloise Dunlap, Ph.D. is a sociologist and graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. She has extensive qualitative experience in research and analysis with African-American families, drug users, drug dealers, distressed households, sex workers, and with drug-abusing families. Her work is rooted in an attempt to understand violence, drug use and markets, male-female and family relations and whether and how these relationships contribute to African-American family instability. Dr. Dunlap has conducted survey research, focus groups, intensive ethnographic studies, including lengthy in-depth interview and detailed observations in many African-American households, communities, drug settings, and a variety of inner city social context. Her research has been focused upon the nature of family interaction patterns and how the presence of drug users/sellers affects family life.
Some of her research includes: Director of first large scale crack for crime study entitled Careers in Crack, Drug Use, Distribution, and Non-drug Criminality; Co-Investigator of large scale ethnographic study entitled Natural History of Crack Distribution/Abuse; an ethnographic examination of sex for crack in New York City as part of a seven major cities study administered for NIDA by Birch and Davis; an examination of drug dealers family life and violence entitled Violence in Crack User/Seller Households: An Ethnography; a focus upon co-occurring factors entitled Co-Occurring Drugs And Violence In Distressed Households; and Males in Distressed Households: Co-occurring Drugs and Violence. Dr. Dunlap has observed numerous times over the years the restructuring and reformulation of family relationships based on drug use and/or sales. She has numerous publications analyzing various issues related to drug use and or sales, violence and other social phenomenon. At the present time, Dr. Eloise Dunlap is Principal Investigator of a NIDA grant entitled Marijuana/Blunts: Use, Subcultures and Markets designed to investigate blunts consumption among youths; use practices, social settings and markets.
Dr. Dunlap's long-term career goal is to increase public understanding and uncovering social processes by which behavioral patterns of aggression and violence are practiced, as well as learned and passed on from one generation to another, and drug use and co-occurring factors among inner city distressed families. She is working to develop a more accurate and precise conceptual and empirical understanding of the nature, types, and severity of aggression and violence within African-American families when one or more members participates in crack and other drug consumption and/or sales. A relevant sub theme of such a research agenda involves understanding the progression or its lack from alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana to hard drug (cocaine, crack, and heroin) use and/or sales as well as violence in various social contexts especially within the family.