Dana R. Fisher

Dana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity and Professor in the School of International Service at American University. She currently serves as a Non Resident Senior Fellow in the Governance Program at the Brookings Institution, and the past-chair of the Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.

Her research focuses on questions related to democracy, civic engagement, activism, and climate politics. Current projects include studying political elites’ responses to climate change, the ways national service corps programs in the US are expanding their work on disaster response, recovery, and resilience, and on-ramps to activism and political engagement. Her research employs a mixed-methods approach that integrates data collected through open-ended semi-structured interviews and participant observation with various forms of survey data.

Professor Fisher has authored over 80 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and has written seven books. Her most recent book is Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action (Columbia University Press 2024). Fisher presented a TED Talk about How to Be An Apocalyptic Optimist in 2024. She blogs about her research, writing, and findings regularly.

Fisher also serves on the editorial boards of the journals Climate Policy, Environmental Research Letters, and Mobilization. She is a Series Editor for the Series on Society and the Environment at Columbia University Press along with Evan Schofer at UC-Irvine.

She has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS Newshour to discuss her work. Her words have appeared in the popular media, including in the Guardian, the Washington Post, The Nation, Rolling Stone, Slate, TIME Magazine , The Hill, Politico, Business Insider and the American Prospect. In winter 2021, she was called “One of America’s Most Prescient Political Thinkers” in a piece on the Changing Politics of Climate Change for PBS. Her research has been featured in media outlets such as the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Vox, various programs on National Public Radio, the BBC, the CBC, and on numerous podcasts. A list of selected media coverage with links is available under media.

Professor Fisher has presented her work to the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, federal agencies, foundations, presidential campaigns, and other political organizations. She served as a Contributing Author for Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Review (IPCC AR6) writing about citizen engagement and civic activism.

Fisher received her Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her undergraduate degree is in East Asian Studies and Environmental Studies from Princeton University.