Kai Schafft is a Professor of Education and Rural Sociology within the Department of Education Policy Studies at Penn State University. His research broadly examines the relationship between social inequality and spatial inequality, and how rural schools and communities may mediate that relationship. He is the author or editor of four books (one in a second, revised edition), and over 90 articles, book chapters, reviews and reports. He has published widely within a range of social scientific journals, including the Journal of Research in Rural Education, Rural Sociology, the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, Sociologia Ruralis, the American Journal of Education, Social Problems, and many others. He served as editor in chief for the Journal of Research in Rural Education from 2008-2015, was a Fulbright Fellow at Central European University’s Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest, Hungary in 2015, and in 2018 was elected to serve as president of the Rural Sociological Society.