James Kendra
Director, Disaster Research Center
Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration
University of Delaware
James Kendra is an associate professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration and Director of the Disaster Research Center. Previously he was coordinator of the Emergency Administration and Planning Program in the Department of Public Administration at the University of North Texas. His research interests focus on individual and organizational responses to risk, improvisation and creativity during crisis, post-disaster shelter and housing, and planning for behavioral health services. Projects have included research on the reestablishment of New York City’s emergency operations center after the 9/11 attacks, a major study of the waterborne evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11, research on the social impacts of the Indian Ocean tsunami, and research on the organization of disaster behavioral health services.
Dr. Kendra has participated in several quick response disaster reconnaissance trips, including the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, 2003 Midwest tornadoes, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and Hurricane Ike in 2008, as well as documenting maritime relief efforts in the US following the 2010 Haiti earthquake. He has been involved in several emergency planning and exercise efforts, and he is a Certified Emergency Manager. He graduated from Massachusetts Maritime Academy with a degree in marine transportation, and served several years at sea, attaining a Master Mariner license. His master’s degree is in geography from the University of Massachusetts, and his PhD is in geography from Rutgers University.
Scott Knowles
Affiliate Faculty, Disaster Research Center
Associate Professor and Interim Head for History,
Department of History and Politics, Drexel University
Scott Gabriel Knowles is associate professor and interim department head for History at Drexel University, where he also teaches courses in the Master’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society. He is also presently affiliate faculty of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, the Department of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.
Knowles’ work focuses on the history and public policy dimensions of modern risk and disaster. He is author of The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (UPenn Press, 2011), and Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (UPenn Press, 2009). His work has also appeared in Technology and Culture, Isis, History and Technology, Annals of Science, the Journal of American History, the Journal of the American Planning Association, the New York Times, The Hill, U.S. News and World Report, and the Philadelphia Inquirer among other venues. He has also appeared on the Marty Moss Coane Show and the Leonard Lopate Show. Knowles presently serves on Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter’s Special Independent Advisory Commission on Licenses and Inspections. He is also a member of the Fukushima Forum collaborative research community, and is co-editing a book on the Fukushima disasters.
Tricia Wachtendorf
Associate Director, Disaster Research Center
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice,
University of Delaware
Tricia Wachtendorf is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Delaware and the Associate Director of the world-renown Disaster Research Center – the oldest center in the world focused on the social science aspects of disaster. Over the past two decades, her research has focused on multi-organizational coordination before, during and after disasters, transnational crises, and social vulnerability to disaster events. Dr. Wachtendorf has engaged in quick response field work after such events as the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, the tsunamis affecting India, Sri Lanka (2004) and Japan (2011), Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy (2012), as well as the earthquakes in China (2008) and Haiti (2010). With numerous research grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, she has published widely on improvisation in disasters as well as disaster convergence. Her most recent funded research projects examine the temporal nature of household and emergency management decision-making during hurricane events, investigate humanitarian logistics during disaster response, and use a visual sociology approach to explore benchmarks of recovery following the 2011 disaster in Japan.