Our Inaugural Featured Fellow is Dr. Heather Smith-Kirkland, who recently defended her dissertation at American University and will be transitioning to Alumni status this summer.

Dr. Smith-Kirkland, a cultural anthropologist, joined the Bill Anderson Fund as a Fellow in 2016, earning the Norma Doneghy Award for Dedication to Excellence the same year. She served as Vice Chairperson of the BAF Student Council from 2016-2017, helping to organize the Disaster Dash in 2016 and 2017 and develop the BAF student handbook. Heather is the Assistant Director of Financial Operations and Grants Management for the School of Public Affairs, a career spanning over thirteen years of service at American University, with an emphasis on cross divisional collaboration to implement business intelligence and data governance tools. Prior to her role in Finance Administration, she worked for the Justice Programs Office which provided training and technical assistance to Criminal Justice agencies.

Dr. Smith-Kirkland is a social scientist with CADAN, the Culture and Disaster Action Network. And a member of the Risk and Disaster Topical Interest Group with the Society for Applied Anthropology.

Heather’s work as a cultural anthropologist focuses on the field of hazards research and disaster mitigation. Her work integrates three research tracts:

Mitigating the impacts of disasters on marginalized communities specifically low-income populations

Inter-generational trauma and mental health outcomes in underrepresented populations

Structural Inequity in Emergency Management

Her dissertation is entitled Changemakers in Emergency Management. Changemakers bring together large networks to encourage collaboration and information sharing among stakeholders. Her ethnographic study set out to capture the experiences of people who are underrepresented in emergency management. This includes a range of people who are socially located on the margins of race, class, gender, sexuality, and functional access norms. It exploresExploring the intersectionality of these perspectives and how we operationalize diversity and inclusion in this field. Heather successfully defended her dissertation with distinction in April of this year.

In 2012, Heather received an honorable mention from the National Science Foundation for her graduate research on disasters and trauma. In 2017, she was invited to co-author a paper with a FEMA Program manager after conducting an ethnographic analysis of the transcripts of an inter-generational panel on Emergency Management.

In March of 2018 Heather was invited to participate in a focus group reviewing the 2018-2022 Strategic Plan for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA.

Heather is committed to public anthropology with the goal of making her work accessible outside of academia. Engaging with practitioners and local communities, she is a member of the following associations: the National Hazard Mitigation Association; the Society for

Applied Anthropology, SFAA; and the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists, WAPA.

Heather holds a BA in Anthropology from Rollins College and PhD in Cultural Anthropology from American University.

You can find one of Heather’s publications on Inter-generational communication in Emergency Management here: https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/docs/generational%20perspectives%20final%205.22.17docx.pdf

Connect with Heather on LinkedIn: Heather Kirkland, PhD | LinkedIn

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Hazard & Disaster Mitigation, Disaster Recovery, Inter-generational Trauma and Communication, Mental Health, Oral History, Inter-disciplinary Collaboration, Public-private partnerships.