Lori Peek is director of the Natural Hazards Center and professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She wrote the award-winning book Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11, co-edited Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora and the Handbook of Environmental Sociology, and co-authored Children of Katrina and The Continuing Storm: Learning from Katrina. Peek also helped develop and 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 R. Biden and approved by the U.S. Senate to serve on the Board of the National Institute of Building Sciences. Peek’s research is currently funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Geological Survey, Andrew A. Mellon Foundation, and Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies. She has conducted field investigations in the aftermath of several major disasters and recently testified before members of the U.S. Congress on the topic of Ensuring Equity in Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Recovery. Peek is the principal investigator for the NSF-funded CONVERGE facility, which is dedicated to improving research coordination and advancing the ethical conduct and scientific rigor of disaster research. She also leads the NSF-supported Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) and Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Extreme Events Research (ISEEER) networks. Peek is co-principal investigator for an NSF-effort focused on advancing interdisciplinary methods and approaches for hazards and disaster research. She is also co-leading a U.S. Geological Survey funded project on earthquake early warning systems in schools, and she is principal investigator for a recently funded project on reducing social vulnerability to disasters.
keywords
qualitative methods, environmental sociology, race, ethnicity, and religion
SOCY 1001 - Introduction to Sociology
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2018 / Fall 2019 / Spring 2021 / Fall 2022
Examines basic sociological ideas including social relations, social interaction, social structure, and social change. Examples are drawn from societies around the world.
