Kathleen Tierney

University of Colorado Boulder
Kathleen Tierney is professor emerita in the Department of Sociology and a research professor and fellow in the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), University of Colorado Boulder. From 2003 to 2016, she served as director of the Natural Hazards Center within IBS. Prior to moving to Colorado, she was a professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware and a director of the Disaster Research Center. During her time as a faculty member at those institutions, she taught courses on the sociology of disasters, qualitative and field research methods, and collective behavior and social movements.
Tierney conducts research and publishes on a variety of disaster-related topics, with an emphasis on disaster vulnerability and resilience and the political economy of hazards and disasters. Many of her ideas about the social production of risk and the political and economic dimensions of disasters can be found in The Social Roots of Risk (Stanford University Press) and the second edition of Disasters: A Sociological Approach (Polity Press).
The awards she has received for her scholarship include the Fred Buttel Distinguished Contribution award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Environmental Sociology, the Charles Fritz Award for Lifetime Contributions from the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Disasters, and the Dr. B. Wayne Blanchard Award for Academic Excellence in Emergency Management Higher Education. The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, where she served as a board member and vice president, has honored her as a Distinguished Lecturer and Honorary Lifetime Member.