Shirley Laska is professor emerita of sociology at the University of New Orleans, where in 2002, she created the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response, and Technology (CHART) following a near-decade stint as vice president of research. Before this appointment, she established the Environmental Social Science Research Institute which began her commitment to study and support coastal storm damage mitigation. In its 22-year existence, CHART has served as a training center for a large cadre of master's and doctoral students who appreciate both hazards risk assessment and reduction. During her academic career she was author of numerous peer-reviewed publications, research grants, service on several National Academy of Sciences and Naval Research Advisory Board committees and awards from the American Sociological Society and Rural Sociology filled her academic career. An edited volume by Laska, Louisiana’s Response to Extreme Weather–A Coastal State’s Adaptation Challenges and Successes, was published in 2020.
Following retirement from the University in 2009, Laska co-founded the Lowlander Center with Kristina Peterson, a post-disaster, long-term sustainable recovery specialist. Lowlander is honing an even more applied participatory action research approach to community collaboration honoring the knowledge and capacity of coastal and inland Louisiana indigenous and historied communities as they cope with extreme risk from the changing climate and the carbon-based enterprises that harm them directly and contribute to climate change. With the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians tribal community (now Jean Charles Choctaw Nation Tribe), Lowlander Center visioned and prepared their resettlement proposal for the Rockefeller National Disaster Resilience Competition, for which the state received $52 million to implement the project proposed by the tribe. The resettlement as proposed by the tribe in considerable detail never came to fruition as the proposal was not honored.
A recent addition to the Lowlander Center is an initiative that has proved very productive–the Disaster Justice Network (DJN). The initiative was described at the poster session at the 2023 Natural Hazards Center Workshop. Designed to bring together members of various interest groups, of all ages, some doctoral students, some engineering experts, others social science, from all over the country, to work together to address disaster response and resiliency challenges for modest-incomed residents, while remaining in the organizations from which they engaged DJN.
Throughout the duration of her applied research work, Laska has advocated for the adoption of resilient construction methods for flooding, wind damage and storm surge, approaches inadequately known and implemented nationwide as the most beneficial way to address storm risk in coastal areas as well. Lowlander Center continuously supports the Rebuilding the Boot campaign.