Susanna M. Hoffman is a disaster anthropologist, author, co-author, editor of thirteen books, two ethnographic films, and over forty articles. Among her books are: Cooling Down: Local Responses to Global Climate Change (Berghahn 2021, with Thomas Eriksen and Paulo Mendes); Nostalgia (Pain of Past), Ecalgia (Pain of Home), and Topalgia (Pain of Place): The Deep Cultural Complexities Behind the Persistent Problematic of Displacement and Resettlement (Berghahn, 2022); Inplacement: Global Outbreaks and the Anthropology of Isolation (Berghahn, 2022, with Virginia Garcia-Acosta); The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective and its sequel Angry Earth Two (Routledge, 1999 and 2020, with Anthony Oliver-Smith), Disaster Upon Disaster: Exploring the Gap Between Knowledge, Policy and Practice (2020 Berghahn Books, with Roberto Barrios), and Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster (School of American Research Press, 2002, with Anthony Oliver-Smith). Hoffman's films include the award-winning Kypseli: Women and Men Apart and the Emmy winning The Nature of Culture.
Hoffman launched the Risk and Disaster Thematic Interest Group for the Society of Applied Anthropology, initiated and chairs the Commission on Risk and Disaster for the International Union of Anthropology and Ethnographic Sciences. She was the first recipient of the Fulbright Foundation Aegean Initiative Grant concerning disasters between Greece and Turkey and helped write the United Nations Statement on Women and Disaster. She is also a member of the American Anthropology Task Force on World Food Problems.