Biography

Jennifer (Jenn) Trivedi, Ph.D., is an assistant professor with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Delaware. She received a Ph.D. and M.A. in anthropology from the University of Iowa and a B.A. in history from the University of Georgia. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware from 2016 to 2018, working on a large NSF-funded evacuation study, collaborating extensively with civil engineers and atmospheric scientists, and conducting quick-response research following flooding in Louisiana, Hurricane Matthew, and related inland flooding and the false ballistic missile alert in Hawaii.

Trivedi's work focuses on the historical and cultural contexts surrounding disaster vulnerability, response, recovery, resilience, and decision-making. She is engaged in multiple ongoing research projects, including studies of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on different groups in the United States; hurricane evacuation decision-making and timing as part of an interdisciplinary team; varied cultural aspects of disasters; and long-term recovery processes.

Trivedi is the author of Mississippi after Katrina: Disaster Recovery & Reconstruction on the Gulf Coast (Lexington Books, 2020), which examines the cultural-historical context in long-term recovery from Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, Mississippi, building on her ethnographic fieldwork there in 2006 and 2010-2011.

Trivedi is a current member and social media manager (@RiskDisasterTIG) of the Risk and Disaster Topical Interest Group (R&D TIG) in the Society for Applied Anthropology (SFAA), as well as a former R&D TIG co-chair.