Today I welcome disaster sociologist and author of Disasters: Sociological Aspects Kathleen Tierney back to COVIDCalls.
Kathleen Tierney is professor emerita in the Department of Sociology and research professor in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. From 2003 to 2017, she was director of the university’s Natural Hazards Center. 
She was lead author (with co-authors Michael Lindell and Ronald Perry) of Facing the Unexpected: Disaster Preparedness and Response in the United States (Joseph Henry Press 2001), co-editor (with William Waugh) of Emergency Management: Principles and Practice for Local Governments (ICMA Press, 2007), and author of The Social Roots of Risk (Stanford University Press 2014). Her most recent book, Disasters: Sociological Aspects was published in 2019 by Polity Press.
She has received recognition for her contributions to the study of hazards and disasters, including the Fred Buttel Award for Distinguished Contributions from the Environment and Society section of the American Sociological Association and the Charles Fritz Award from the International Sociological Association’s International Research Committee on Disasters. She has served as a board member and vice president of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and has been named an honorary lifetime EERI member—one of only two sociologists to receive that honor.