Santina L. Contreras

Santina Contreras is an assistant professor of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis at the University of Southern California (USC) Sol Price School of Public Policy. Her research focuses on interrogating community engagement practices surrounding hazards and disasters. Specifically, this involves examining the implementation, equitability, and underlying power dynamics associated with community engagement activities in hazard, disaster, and environmental planning spaces. In her work, she takes an interdisciplinary approach toward understanding relationships between local communities and external stakeholders to highlight the ways in which inequitable engagement approaches undertaken by these entities can lead to the overburdening and extraction of local communities.

Contreras has extensive experience working in the private and nonprofit sectors on the design and implementation of resilience-building and international development-focused projects. She has published numerous papers and reports focused on assessing equity, justice, and engagement approaches surrounding natural hazard events, environmental planning projects, and broader resilience-building efforts. Her research has been covered by major media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, National Public Radio, and Public Broadcasting Service.

Before joining the faculty at USC, Contreras worked as an Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University. Prior to that, she held positions as a Researcher-in-Residence at the Natural Hazards Center and a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Environmental Design Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Contreras holds a Bachelor of Science in structural engineering from the University of California, San Diego, and a Master of Science in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California, Berkley. She received her PhD in planning, policy, and design from the University of California, Irvine.