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’s dissertation research focused on the interrelation of individual and community resilience and social vulnerability in hurricane-prone communities. 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 statistics, sociology of disaster, environmental sociology, environmental justice, and hazard mitigation and recovery. She has worked with over 15 undergraduates on research projects, most of which are from groups that are underrepresented in science.

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 including t.e.j.a.s. (Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Service), GeoHazards International, local long-term recovery organizations, Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), the American Planning Association, as well as with high school students.

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

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

Hazard Mitigation, Disaster Recovery, Disaster Management, Environmental Sustainability, Equity and Stratification, Environmental Migration, Social Capital