John Major Eason is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation. He is Founder and Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Justice Lab and also a founding member of the UW pancreas cancer data group with Oncologist Noelle LoConte. He mostly served as a member of the University at Buffalo’s inaugural Center for Diversity Innovation's Distinguished Visiting Scholar cohort 2020-21. Professor Eason has faculty affiliations across UW-Madison including the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work, Robert M. LaFollette School of Public Affairs, Department of Afro-American Studies, Center for Demography and Ecology, Institute for Research on Poverty, the Applied Population Lab, and the Carbone Cancer Center. From 2010- 2013, he was as Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University before moving to the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M from 2013-2017. Before receiving an M.P.P. & Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he worked as a congregation-based community organizer focusing on housing and criminal justice issues and served as a political organizer most notably for then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama. He is a mixed-methods researcher specializing in ethnography and rare events and research interests in rural/urban communities, punishment, and race. His work on COVID in Confined Spaces is funded by the National Science Foundation.