Scott Knowles

Scott Gabriel Knowles is originally from Dallas, Texas—he attended the University of Texas at Austin and Johns Hopkins University. Knowles is the Senior Director of Research for the Defense Industrial Base Institute (DIBI) and Research Professor in the Department of History of Northeastern University. Previously he served as Endowed Chair Professor in the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), where he also served as Associate Vice President in the International Office. He is a historian of disaster worldwide, focusing on the processes that make disasters possible, and the application of history and public policy to reduce future disasters. From 2000-2004, and 2005 to 2021 Knowles was based at Drexel University where he served at different times as Department Head for History and Associate Dean in the Pennoni Honors College.

Knowles is the author/editor of six books—including Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (2009); The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (2011); Building Drexel: A University and Its City, 1891-2016 (co-edited with Richardson Dilworth, 2016); World’s Fairs in the Era of the Cold War (co-edited with Art Molella, 2019); The Second Environmental Crisis (co-edited with James Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf, 2019); and Legacies of Fukushima: 3.11 in Perspective (co-edited with Kyle Cleveland and Ryuma Shineha, 2021). From 2020-2022 Knowles hosted #COVIDCalls every weekday, a live podcast discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic. He is also founding co-editor of the Journal of Disaster Studies.

His work on the history of risk and disaster has appeared in Daedalus, Anthropocene Review, Natural Hazards Observer, History and Technology, Journal of Policy History, American Scientist, Technology and Culture, and Engineering Studies—he has also written for Hankyoreh, New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Slate, Conservation Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Hill.