Kristin Taylor is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Wayne State University. Her research investigates the politics of disasters by examining learning about hazards in government after a disaster. Her work is motivated by a desire to understand which community characteristics, information sources, and political factors influence how governments make policy choices to protect vulnerable populations and enhance resilience.
She has studied policy learning about mitigation and recovery in city and county governments in Texas after Hurricane Harvey. In addition, her work has unpacked the nuances of policy learning about risk and resilience after water infrastructure failures in a national study of drinking water systems. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Taylor and colleagues studied the impact of long-duration crises on policy learning and change. She studied how policy entrepreneurs and advocates can effectively encourage individuals to undertake risk mitigating behaviors in contentious political conditions.
Most recently, Taylor works in collaboration with researchers from nine universities and private industry working on the National Full-Scale Testing Infrastructure for Community Hardening in Extreme Wind, Surge, and Wave Events (NICHE) program, a 4 year $12.8M cooperative agreement awarded from the National Science Foundation. Taylor is the lead researcher on the stakeholder engagement activities of NICHE. NICHE responds to a pressing national imperative to promote more resilient communities by reducing losses, population displacement, and outmigration due to climate-driven hazards. NICHE is a part of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure Network.