Dr. Tara Hefferan is an applied anthropologist, with research and teaching interests that include the anthropology of sport (particularly football/soccer studies), women's health, economic development, faith-based organizations, community engagement, and power/knowledge.  She earned the Ph.D. in anthropology from Michigan State University, with dissertation research that examined faith-based partnerships linking Catholic parishes in Michigan and Haiti. Her work has been published by Kumarian Press in the book Twinning Faith and Development:  Catholic Parish Partnering in the US and Haiti.

Dr. Hefferan has also co-edited with Julie Adkins and Laurie Occhipinti two books focused on faith-based development:  Not by Faith Alone:  Social Services, Social Justice, and Faith-based Organizations in the United States and Bridging the Gaps:  Faith-based Organizations, Neoliberalism, and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Dr. Hefferan has co-edited with Keri Brondo a special issue of the NAPA Bulletin entitled "Intersections of Faith and Development in Local and Global Contexts."

Currently, Dr. Hefferan's research focuses on the construction of a new soccer stadium in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  This ethnographic study explores how people are making sense of and adopting positions of opposition/support related to the stadium.  While the stadium ostensibly is about promoting economic development, this research is primarily interested in what else it is generating. What meanings, emotions, and actions are being shaped by, while also shaping, the stadium project?  This work is supported by an Affiliate Support Fund grant awarded by GVSU's Center for Scholarly and Creative Endeavors. 

Previously, Dr. Hefferan is working with the Inter-Collegiate Alliance for Health and Well-Being (ICAHW), which she co-founded with nursing faculty from GVSU, Calvin College, and University of Detroit-Mercy.  The ICAHW is a novel inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional movement to better health within low-income and homeless communities in Grand Rapids by encouraging community walking groups.  With her students, Dr. Hefferan has interviewed community members in the Heartside and Westside neighborhoods in order to produce personalized life-history "memory books" for walking group participants.  In Spring 2016, Dr. Hefferan and Dr. Susan Harrington (GVSU Nursing) received the GVSU Office of Community Engagement's "Emerging Engagement Award" for this work.