Faculty Profiles

BIO

Elizabeth Fussell is a sociologist and demographer whose research focuses on environmental drivers of migration and social inequalities in migration, health, and other post-disaster outcomes. She is a Professor at Brown University with appointments in the Population Studies and Training Center and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Fussell is currently investigating the long-term effects of the disaster following Hurricane Katrina on the residential mobility, health, and well-being of the residents of New Orleans using innovative methods and datasets in the Federal Statistical Research Data Center. She also studies the effects of hurricanes and other exogenous shocks on migration and internal migration systems in the United States, with a new focus on Puerto Rico. Her research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the Springer journal Population & Environment from 2017-2024. She is currently co-faculty director of the Equitable Climate Futures Initiative at Brown University and leads the Capacity Building Core for the Climate, Health, and Aging Innovation and Research Solutions for Communities (CHAIRS-C), a National Institute of Aging-funded climate change and health research center.