Rate My Professor Dana Fisher

Dana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, and Equity and a Professor in the School of International Service at American University, positions she has held since July 2023. She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001 and 1999, respectively, and her A.B. in East Asian Studies and Environmental Studies from Princeton University in 1993. Previously, she served as a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland. Fisher is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Governance Program at the Brookings Institution, past-chair of the Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, and former president of the Eastern Sociological Society. She contributed to Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report as an author on citizen engagement and civic activism. In 2021, PBS recognized her as one of "America's Most Prescient Political Thinkers" regarding the changing politics of climate change.

Fisher's research addresses democracy, civic engagement, activism, and climate politics through a mixed-methods approach incorporating semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and survey data. Her ongoing projects examine political elites' responses to climate change, national service corps programs' roles in disaster response, recovery, and resilience, and pathways to activism and political engagement. She has authored seven books, including Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action (Columbia University Press, 2024), and over 80 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Key publications include "Climate activism and its effects" (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2021), "The broader importance of #FridaysForFuture" (Nature Climate Change, 2019), "An empirical examination of echo chambers in US climate policy networks" (Nature Climate Change, 2015), and "Youth political participation: Bridging activism and electoral politics" (Annual Review of Sociology, 2012). Fisher serves on the editorial boards of Environmental Research Letters, Climate Policy, and Mobilization, and is Series Editor for the Series on Society and the Environment at Columbia University Press. In fall 2024, she presented a TED Talk entitled "How to Be An Apocalyptic Optimist." Her scholarship has appeared in outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, and PBS NewsHour, with presentations to the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, federal agencies, foundations, presidential campaigns, and political organizations.