Liesel Ritchie
Liesel A. Ritchie is assistant director for research at the Natural Hazards Center. She has served as either principal investigator or senior researcher on more than 70 projects since 1996. Since 2001, Liesel's focus has been on the social impacts of disasters with an emphasis on technological disasters, social capital, and renewable resource communities.
Liesel currently directs three National Science Foundation projects—one on the social impacts of the high stakes litigation resolution associated with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, one on the 2008 TVA Kingston Fossil Plant ash release, and one on social impacts of litigation and settlement activities related to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Liesel is also leading evaluation efforts associated with the USGS’s Science Applications for Risk Reduction Tsunami Scenario Project; the Department of the Interior’s Strategic Sciences Group; and is co-PI on a NOAA-funded project to incorporate social science into its tsunami program. More recently, she has been involved with social impact assessment efforts regarding oil pipeline development activities in northwestern Canada.
Liesel is coeditor of the January 2012 issue of American Behavioral Scientist on the BP disaster and is author or coauthor on five recent articles related to her work on that event, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the earthquake in Haiti. Between 2006 and 2012 she served as chair and program co-chair of the American Evaluation Association topical interest group on disaster and emergency management evaluation. She currently serves on the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Learning from Earthquakes committee.