Lori Peek is an American sociologist, academic, and author. She is a professor in the Department of Sociology as well as the director of the Natural Hazards Center in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Furthermore, she is a presidentially-appointed member of the board of directors at the National Institute of Building Sciences. Peek is most known for her works on the sociology of disaster, children and youth, gender, religion, qualitative methods, and environmental sociology. Among her authored works are her publications in academic journals, including Sociology of Religion, Child Development, and Natural Hazards as well as books such as Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans After 9/11, Children of Katrina, and The Continuing Storm: Learning from Katrina. Moreover, she has co-edited two volumes including Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora and the Handbook of Environmental Sociology. She served as social science lead and a contributing author to Safer, Stronger, Smarter: A Guide to Improving School Natural Hazard Safety.
Education Peek earned her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas in 1997, followed by a Master's in Education and Human Resource Studies from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1999. In 2005, she completed her Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder in Boulder, Colorado.
Career After receiving her doctorate, she was hired at Colorado State University, where she held the position of assistant professor in the Sociology department from 2005 to 2011. Subsequently, she was promoted to associate professor of Sociology at Colorado State University with an appointment in the Colorado School of Public Health from 2011 to 2016. Additionally, from 2013 to 2020, she held an adjunct research scientist appointment at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Since 2017, she has been a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Peek served as president of the Research Committee on Disasters for the International Sociological Association from 2015 to 2018. Notably, she was the first woman to be elected to this role. She also serves on the board of directors at the National Institute of Building Sciences for the term 2021 to 2025, having been appointed by President Joseph R. Biden and approved by the U.S. Senate. Peek has received awards for her undergraduate and graduate teaching and her mentoring of students and postdoctoral scholars. She was a co-principal Investigator for a National Science Foundation INCLUDES grant focused on Capacity Building in Disaster Research for Scholars from Underrepresented Groups. Since 2014, she has served as a founding board member for the Bill Anderson Fund, which provides mentoring to Black, Latinx, and Indigenous doctoral students in disaster research and hazard mitigation.
Works In her first book, titled Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans After 9/11, Peek drew on federal hate crime statistics, bias crime reports, field observations, and 140 in-depth interviews to characterize the discussed post-9/11 experiences of young Muslim Americans. The book explored the breadth of discrimination that Muslims experienced after 9/11, the collective consequences for this group, and the ways that Muslim Americans coped. In a review of the book, Nikkia DeLuz of Lynn University, wrote, "This study is significant because it provides outstanding and relevant insight into the public and political reaction to crisis events and the subsequent marginalization of members of society due to catastrophes beyond their control. Peek's research is also important because the results of her longitudinal and qualitative effort, provides the reader with testimonials that are compelling and invaluable to an understanding of the human and societal components and consequences resulting from crisis events." In 2012, sociologist Lynn Weber and Peek co-edited Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora, offering an examination of Hurricane Katrina evacuees' challenges, emphasizing the disproportionate impact on low-income African American women and showcasing their resilience in rebuilding lives nationwide. In her review of the book, Kirsten Dellinger from the University of Mississippi said "This gripping edited volume provides an in-depth analysis of the experiences of New Orleanians displaced by Gulf Coast-wrecking Katrina in August 2005." Further, she observes that the work grew out of a long-term collaboration between a collective of social scientists, and wrote that the "result of their dedication to engaged community research is a strong, cohesive, feminist collection with a refreshing focus on women's first-hand accounts, deft analysis of the importance of social context, and a careful and consistent exploration of the hierarchies of race, class, gender, age, and citizenship and the role they played in making this storm a social disaster." Alice Fothergill and Peek's 2015 book, Children of Katrina, is an ethnography of children after a disaster. Over nearly a decade of research, they explored the recovery trajectories of children and youth, highlighting the impact of Katrina on child well-being, family dynamics, and community connections, and emphasizing the crucial factors that either facilitated or hindered their recovery. In his review of the book, Timothy J. Haney from Mount Royal University said "Children of Katrina serves as an exemplar of committed, dedicated, disaster research done out of an earnest desire to improve the lives of Katrina-affected children." Peek co-edited the 2021 Handbook of Environmental Sociology. Consisting of 25 chapters, the text offers an overview of the state of the field. Kai Erikson and Peek's 2022 book, The Continuing Storm: Learning from Katrina, is the last volume in the Katrina Bookshelf series. The book focuses on the human causes and consequences of Katrina and offers an expanded view of the enduring human costs of the catastrophe across time and space. In his review of the book, Ethan Raker of the University of British Columbia said "Erikson and Peek make clear... that many people continue to carry with them the consequences of Katrina, some of whom are suffering due to compounding collective traumas."
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