Rate My Professor Caroline Orchiston

Caroline Orchiston is Research Professor and Director of the Centre for Sustainability Research at the University of Otago in the School of Geography. She earned a PhD from the University of Otago on tourism in high earthquake-risk areas such as the Alpine Fault, a first-class honours degree in Geology from the same university, and a Master's in Tourism focusing on environmental management in New Zealand's marine tourism industry. After her honours degree, Orchiston worked five years in the mining industry before advancing her academic career in disaster-related research. Her career includes leadership as Associate Director of QuakeCoRE, New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence for Earthquake Resilience, co-leading Disciplinary Theme 4 on Social and Cultural Factors shaping Resilience. She served as Science Lead for the award-winning AF8 programme (2016–2023), developing the SAFER Framework for magnitude 8 Alpine Fault earthquake responses and conducting national outreach via the AF8 Roadshow. Orchiston co-led the Disaster Resilient Rural Communities programme (2019–2024) within Resilience to Nature’s Challenges and secured five-year Endeavour Programme funding in 2023 from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for Ngā Ngaru Wakapuke (2024–2028), co-led with Associate Professor Jamie Howarth, addressing resilience to earthquake sequences.

Orchiston's research specializations include disaster risk reduction, resilience, and recovery; community and business resilience in rural and urban settings; risk communication; scenario planning for critical infrastructure and emergency management; and the resilience-sustainability nexus, particularly in tourism. She has extensive experience supervising postgraduate students to successful outcomes and collaborates with emergency management practitioners, policymakers, and researchers in New Zealand, the USA, Thailand, and beyond to build social capital and grassroots resilience. Key publications feature 'Exploring disaster resilience within the hotel sector: A case study of Wellington and Hawke's Bay, New Zealand' (Brown et al., 2017); 'A systematic review of climate migration research: Gaps in existing literature' (Ghosh & Orchiston, 2022); 'Understanding the wider social and economic context of post-earthquake cordons' (Shrestha et al., 2022); and 'Superseding sustainability: Conceptualising sustainability and resilience in response to the new challenges of tourism development' (Espiner, Higham & Orchiston, 2019). Her scholarship garners over 4,200 citations, an h-index of 24, and i10-index of 43, influencing policy and practice in disaster preparedness.