Biography

Jennifer (Jenn) Trivedi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, a Core Faculty member at the Disaster Research Center, and holds a Joint Appointment with the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration. Her ongoing work focuses on historical and cultural contexts surrounding disasters, including a range of issues like evacuation decision making and timing as part of an interdisciplinary team, disaster response and varied vulnerability, long-term recovery, compounding events and processes related to disasters, and issues of time and perception related to disasters.

Dr. Trivedi has a book out with Lexington Books, Mississippi after Katrina: Disaster Recovery & Reconstruction on the Gulf Coast, examining the cultural-historical context in long-term recovery from Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, Mississippi, as well as a range of sole authored and co-authored works in anthropological and interdisciplinary journals and other publications for the NASEM and public media.

Areas of Expertise/Research Interest

Disaster, Recovery, Evacuation, Response, Vulnerability, Applied Anthropology

Professional Affiliations

• Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA)
• Risk and Disaster Topical Interest Group (R&D TIG) Social Media Manager
• Human Rights and Social Justice Committee Chair
• Natural Hazards Researchers Meeting Organizing Committee (2023, 2024, 2025)

Grants & Awards

• NSF Grant #2334354, Planning: CRISES: Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Catastrophic Surprises, PI: Tricia Wachtendorf; Co-PI: James Kendra; Senior Personnel: Jennifer Horney, Victor. Perez, Shangjia Dong, Jennifer. Trivedi, Eric Stern (SUNY- Albany), and Malka Older (ASU). Other Personnel: Rachel Davidson.
• NSF Grant #2002589, Collaborative Research: Leveraging Massive Smartphone Location Data to Improve Understanding and Prediction of Behavior in Hurricanes. PI: Rachel Davidson; Co- PIs: Tricia Wachtendorf, Sarah DeYoung, and Jennifer Trivedi
• UD Climate Change Hub Grant. Course Development Grants: Revised Climate Change Related Courses for ANTH / BHAN 304: Culture, Health, and Environment. PI: Jennifer Trivedi

Major Publications

Trivedi, Jennifer. 2020. Mississippi after Katrina: Disaster Recovery & Reconstruction on the Gulf Coast. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. (Formerly in Rowman & Littlefield, now Bloomsbury Publishing.)

Trivedi, Jennifer, Sarah DeYoung, Prosper Anyidoho, Maria Porada, Tricia Wachtendorf, Rachel Davidson, and Linda Nozick. 2024. Trust, Traffic, and Contemporary Evacuation Barriers in Hurricane Ida. Journal of Disaster Studies 1(2): 189-219.

Rivera-González, Joyce, Jennifer Trivedi, Elizabeth K. Marino, and Alexa Dietrich. 2022. Imagining an Ethnographic Otherwise During a Pandemic. Human Organization 81(3): 291-300.

Mongold, Emily, Rachel A. Davidson, Jennifer Trivedi, Sarah DeYoung, Tricia Wachtendorf, and Prosper Anyidoho. 2021. Hurricane evacuation beliefs and behaviour of inland vs. coastal populations. Environmental Hazards 20(4): 363-81.

Faas, A. J., Roberto Barrios, Virginia García-Acosta, Adriana Garriga-López, Seven Mattes, and Jennifer Trivedi. Entangled Roots and Otherwise Possibilities: The Anthropology of Disasters COVID-19 Research Agenda. Special Issue: Applied Social Science Response to COVID-19. Human Organization 79(4): 333-42.