Jennifer Lawrence
Education
Dual Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Political Science & Modern Language and Literature, Christopher Newport University
Master of Science (MSc) in International Political Economy, London School of Economics and Political Science
Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought, Virginia Tech
Biography
Jennifer Lawrence, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor in Urban and Environmental Planning. Her research centers on policy, systems, and environmental dimensions of disaster, health, and community resilience. She is currently an Early Career Research Fellow for Human Health and Community Resilience at the National Academies for Medicine, Engineering, and Science in the Gulf Research Program. This fellowship supports research to improve health and wellbeing through community resilience. She also working with the National Institute for Standards and Technology Community Resilience Program metrics project to support the development of validated resilience indicators to support community decision-making and program evaluation. Dr. Lawrence earned her PhD in Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought at Virginia Tech where her research examined the governance and political economy conditions of disaster production and response through the context of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Her first co-edited project, Biopolitical Disaster, analyzes the ecological, community, and social health consequences of chronic and sudden disasters. At the Global Forum for Urban and Regional Resilience where she worked with the research group on Socio-Political Dimensions of Resilience, this research is reflected in The Resilience Machine, a project that calls for resilience-interventions to move beyond adaptation to transform the root causes of risk, vulnerability, and chronic disaster. She is co-founder of FERN: The Feminist Environmental Research Network, a research collaborative that supports critical and creative approaches to understanding and addressing environmental challenges. She is also deeply engaged with the Virginia Food for Virginia Kids program, which has earned funding from Health Resources in Action – The Jeffress Trust – to support the work of addressing food insecurity while also positively impacting workforce development, economic growth, and resilience-building across the Commonwealth of Virginia. Prior to joining UVA, she was an Assistant Professor of Environmental Politics & Policy in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Virginia Tech. She remains affiliated faculty at the Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability at Virginia Tech where she teaches courses on sustainability.
