Kevin Smiley

Education: B.A. Sociology and History, Western Kentucky University; M.A. in Sociology, University of Memphis; Ph.D. in Sociology, Rice University

Courses Taught: DTSC 1301-1302: Data and Society

Biography: Kevin T. Smiley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he is also a Core Faculty member in the School of Data Science and a Core Faculty member in the Program in Public Policy.

His research investigates social inequalities and environmental change, especially as it relates to disasters, place making, health, immigration, race, and social capital.

Most recently, he has been working in the field of extreme event attribution studying the relationship between climate change and extreme weather. As a sociologist, he is especially interested in the climate change-attributed impacts from these events, and how people interpret and act on these data. This work led to grant funding from an NSF CAREER grant and from an Early-Career Innovators program at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He also served as a committee member and contributing author for a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus study on the field. His research has led to considerable media coverage including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, and he has appeared on The Weather Channel multiple times.

This work built on foundations on extreme weather and flooding during Hurricane Harvey, work that was supported by an Early-Career Research Fellowship from the National Academies’ Gulf Research Program. He was also named as part of a cohort of the Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters Researchers through NSF. Finally, he is the author (with Michael O. Emerson) of Market Cities, People Cities (NYU Press, 2018).