Mary Angelica Painter

Mary Angelica Painter is a postdoctoral research associate at the Natural Hazards Center. Her research interests include understanding and developing new and robust measures to study social vulnerabilities in the context of natural hazards, while also incorporating the effects of the role of government, policy, and politics in disaster response. Her work at the Natural Hazards Center focuses on finding the root of social vulnerability and addressing these issues in places at risk to disaster in a 10-state Midwest region, which includes her home state of Missouri. Specializing in research methodology, she is keen on developing statistical tools to advance the understanding of social vulnerability and disaster response.

Mary Angelica also researches social vulnerability, compounding hazards/disasters, and political dynamics of disaster response in Puerto Rico in coordination with Social Vulnerability and Resilience Lab (SOLVER) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which includes the role of policy feedback, social capital, and electoral consequences. She earned a PhD in political science from the University of Missouri – St. Louis, where she focused on research methodology and comparative politics. She is the co-director of the Confluence chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network, which connects journalists, policy makers, and civic leaders with researchers to influence policy, and a co-Leader of RLadiesSTL, helping to close the gender gap in the use of R/RStudio in data analytics.