Dawn Carr’s expertise lies in understanding the factors that bolster older adults’ ability to remain healthy and active as long as possible. Her recent work focuses on understanding the complex pathways between health and active engagement during later life, particularly with respect to the ways in which engaging in paid work, volunteering, and caregiving shapes cognitive, psychological, and functional health, and the onset of disability. Dawn is particularly concerned about issues of inequality, including barriers and facilitators of these activities as well as the differential effects these activities have on well-being. Before joining Florida State University in 2016, Dawn was a researcher at the Stanford Center on Longevity, a postdoctoral fellow in the Carolina Program for Health and Aging Research (CPHAR) at the Institute on Aging at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a researcher at Scripps Gerontology Center.

Dawn earned her BA in Fine Arts at Arizona State, an MGS and a PhD in Science and Gerontology at Miami University Ohio, and completed her post-doctoral work at the
Carolina Program for Health and Aging Research Program at UNC Chapel Hill.