Liz Skilton

Liz Skilton is an associate director of research at the Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Public Policy Center and Associate Professor of history and holds the Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco/BORSF Professorship in Liberal Arts at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Skilton specializes in the history of disaster and human response to it. Skilton received her PhD in history from Tulane University in 2013, a master’s in history from Tulane University in 2010, and a bachelor’s in history and sociology from Case Western Reserve University in 2007. In addition to her role as the head of the Connecting People and Policy Research Program at the Blanco Center, Skilton serves as part of the research faculty at the Guilbeau Center for Public History, Institute for Coastal & Water Research (ICaWR), the Louisiana Watershed Flood Center, and the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and as part of grant research teams studying the impact of disaster on Louisiana. She is co-author of the edited collection, Rethinking American Disasters with Matthew Mulcahy and Cynthia Kierner, co-author of the textbook, The Louisiana Experience (2016), and author of the book, Tempest: Hurricane Naming & American Culture (2019).