Meredith Ramsay is a political science professor, now retired from UMassBoston, where she also served as Associate Dean of the Liberal Arts Faculty. She is a writer, musician, gardener, and amateur photographer. Her latest book is Community, Culture, and Economic Development: Continuity and Change in Two Small Southern Towns, published in 2013 by SUNY Press. It is a follow up to her earlier community study published by SUNY in 1996. Her articles have appeared in various books and scholarly journals. Occasionally she also writes metrical poetry, a skill that she ascribes to her training as a musician and her love of words. She has recently taken up practicing her instrument again, and hopes eventually to regain enough proficiency to play chamber music.