Lori Peek

Lori Peek is director of the Natural Hazards Center and a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-funded CONVERGE facility and the Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) network. She is author of Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11, co-editor of Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora and the Handbook of Environmental Sociology, and co-author of Children of Katrina and The Continuing Storm: Learning from Katrina. Peek is committed to advancing disaster risk reduction with a focus on socially marginalized populations. She has testified before members of the U.S. Congress on the topic of Ensuring Equity in Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Recovery. She also helped write school safety guidance for the nation, which resulted in the publication of FEMA P-1000, Safer, Stronger, Smarter: A Guide to Improving School Natural Hazard Safety. In 2021, she was nominated by President Joseph Biden and approved by the U.S. Senate to a position on the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences. She is the first social scientist to serve in this capacity. Peek received her PhD in sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2005.

For a full bio and list of publications and presentations, please see: https://hazards.colorado.edu/biography/lori-peek.