Ward Lyles
Ward will begin as Assistant Professor in Urban Planning in the fall of 2013, after completing a year as a post-doctoral research associate the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a doctoral student, Ward was a PERISHIP Fellow and Royster Fellow. His dissertation examined the influence of networks of stakeholders involved in planning processes on the incorporation of sustainable land use and development management policies and program into hazard mitigation plans.
Lyles’ research interests include land use and environment planning, particularly in the context of natural hazard mitigation and climate change adaptation, as well as planning networks and plan quality evaluation. Recent peer reviewed publications Ward has co-authored have examined the quality of Disaster Mitigation Act-compliant local and state hazard mitigation planning and explored applications of Social Network Analysis concepts and methods for understanding planning and policy networks.
Lyles received his undergraduate degree in Geology from Middlebury College and his master’s degree in land resources from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He worked on transportation reform issues for the land use planning and environmental organization 1000 Friends of Wisconsin for five years before returning to his home state of North Carolina to pursue his doctoral studies.