Gregory Button
Gregory Button has been studying extreme events for more than three decades. He is a faculty member at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. where he is a senior fellow, co-director of the Disasters, Displacement, and Human Rights Program and a co-director of the Center for the Study of Social Justice. Before his appointment at UTK he was a faculty member for many years at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health in Ann Arbor. He is the author of Disaster Culture: Knowledge and Uncertainty in the Wake of Human and Environmental Catastrophe.
Button has conducted research on numerous disasters, including Love Canal, the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, Hurricane Katrina, the Tennessee Valley Authority ash spill, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the nuclear crisis in Japan. In 1992-1993, he served as a U.S. Congressional Fellow in the Senate as an aide to the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone. He has been a consultant to many members of Congress, federal and state agencies, and NGOs.
Button is a former public radio reporter and he has been interviewed about his research by NPR, The Nation, the Washington Post, The National Reporter, the National Geographic Society, the History Channel, Al Jazeera, and numerous other national and regional media. He writes frequently for CounterPunch and has a Huffington Post blog.
Related Resources from Gregory Button
Downplaying Disaster: Informational Uncertainty in the Wake of Japan's Nuclear Crisis
CounterPunch, March 2011
