Michelle Annette Meyer

Michelle Annette Meyer is the Director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center and an Associate Professor in the Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning Department at Texas A&M University. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University (CSU). She earned her BA from Murray State University in Murray, KY and her MA from CSU.

Michelle’s research interests include disaster recovery and mitigation, environmental and community sustainability, and the interplay between environmental conditions and social vulnerability. Particularly, Michelle studies inequality and how disaster and environmental settings intersect with structural forces that maintain or transform inequality. She uses the lens of social capital and collective efficacy to theoretically understand how relationships between individuals and between governmental and nongovernmental organizations generate or hinder disaster risk and recovery. Hence, her interests have led her to research expansively on volunteer organizations, volunteerism, and philanthropy in disaster. Michelle has worked on various research projects including disaster risk perception, social capital in disaster resilience, nonprofit collaboration for disaster recovery, organizational energy conservation, volunteer training program evaluation, evaluation of disaster response plans for individuals with disabilities, social media use among vulnerable populations, how to increase protective action knowledge in Haiti, citizen science protocols for measuring storm-water condition equity, and environmental attitudes and behaviors. She has conducted research in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Colorado, New York, California, Sri Lanka, and Haiti. As well as survey research throughout the Gulf and Atlantic coastlines and in Peru, India, and Turkey. She regularly teaches courses on research methods and disaster management. She has worked with 30+ undergraduates on research projects, who are often first generation students. Michelle aims to generate research that contributes to communities’ capacity to be resilient in the face of environmental threats, and do so in an equitable manner. Thus, she regularly collaborates with nonprofit organizations on applied research.

Learn more here: https://michelleameyer.weebly.com/

Meeting scheduling here: https://calendly.com/michellemeyer

Hazard Mitigation, Disaster Recovery, Disaster Management, Sustainability, Social Capital