Kevin Smiley

Assistant Professor Louisiana State University

  • Baton Rouge LA

Dr. Smiley is an environmental and urban sociologist who specializes in disaster research.

Contact

Louisiana State University

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Biography

Dr. Kevin Smiley graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2010 with a double major in sociology and history. While attending WKU, he studied abroad in London for the winter term where he took a course focusing on London history during World War II. After graduating from Western, he enrolled in a master’s program in sociology at the University of Memphis, and graduated in 2012. Kevin entered the PhD program in sociology at Rice University in 2012, and graduated in 2017.

After graduating, Kevin was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Buffalo from 2017-2020. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Louisiana State University.

Kevin is an environmental and urban sociologist who specializes in disaster research. Being able to bridge his work to the communities along the Gulf Coast is an aspect of his new job that he’s been looking forward to for a long time. He says, “LSU has fantastic resources and a great community of researchers with whom to pursue this type of work, and the challenges we face along the Gulf Coast are highly motivating for me as a researcher.” Apart from the time he’s spent as a researcher, Kevin has also enjoyed his time teaching the students of LSU as well. While teaching undergraduate sociological theory in the fall, he was impressed with how his students managed to synthesize theory and apply it to current events. Collaborating with the students, as well as with his faculty colleagues, is something he’s appreciative of.

Areas of Expertise

Urban Sociology
Environmental Justice
Disaster Vulnerability
Social Inequality
Flood Risk
Equitable Resilience Planning
Demographic Analysis

Research Focus

Environmental Justice & Urban Disaster Vulnerability

Dr. Smiley’s research focuses on environmental justice and urban disaster vulnerability, investigating how race, climate change, and spatial inequality shape flood risk and recovery across U.S. cities. He integrates spatial-demographic modeling, community surveys, and post-disaster fieldwork to map risk hotspots and guide equitable resilience planning.

Education

Rice University

Ph.D.

Sociology

2017

University of Memphis

M.A.

Sociology

2012

Western Kentucky University

B.A.

Sociology and History

2010

Accomplishments

Featured Researcher, National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, University at Buffalo.

2019

Kinder Scholar, Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University

2018-2019

Marvin E. Olsen Student Paper Award, Environment and Technology Section, American Sociological Association

2016

Media Appearances

Q&A: How China is adapting to increasingly frequent flooding

Carbon Brief  online

2024-06-24

Dr Kevin Smiley, assistant professor from the department of sociology of Louisiana State University tells Carbon Brief:

“Climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of extreme weather. Extra rainfall induced by climate change can be the difference between a building’s parking lot hosting puddles on a rainy day compared to floodwaters crossing the threshold of the building and causing thousands of dollars of damages.

“It’s always important to remember: climate change is anthropogenic, so this increased risk also has human-caused roots.”

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Interview on Weather Unfiltered

The Weather Channel  tv

2024-05-31

An estimated 2.5 million people were displaced from their homes by weather-related disasters last year, according to the @uscensusbureau

We spoke with Dr. Kevin Smiley at @LSU about the national impact of displacement during hurricane season:

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Americans are flocking to cities most at risk of extreme weather. Can they stand the heat?

The Globe and Mail  online

2023-07-29

Instead, the reasons are more complex, rooted partly in the ways people have been drawn to regions that have become desirable places to live and work despite their potential for future climate-related trouble. Economic incentives have not tended to favour climate caution. No city wants to shrink, and municipalities in the U.S. south have proven particularly effective at pursuing economic growth.

“I don’t think there’s many policy-makers in Houston that are trying to discourage migration to Houston – if any,” said Kevin Smiley, an environmental sociologist at Louisiana State University.

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Articles

Environmental attitudes as a hegemonic discourse? Towards decolonial epistemologies of environmental orientations

Environmental Sociology

2025

Environmental attitudes have long been a central focus within environmental sociology. This work addresses topics from climate change denial and political roots of environmental attitudes to how demographic characteristics and culture influence attitudes. Even with this breadth, questions remain about the scope and representation of this research. This paper reviews major theoretical perspectives in sociological research on environmental attitudes, revealing that these frameworks are predominantly Global North centric. While successfully describing attitudes in a Western context, this work is inadequate in explaining the environmental orientations in many non-Western contexts.

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Urban sprawl drives heterogeneous flood exposure patterns along socio-demographic gradients: a case study in the Amite River Basin during the 2016 Louisiana (USA) Floods

Environmental Research Communications

2025

The impact of floods may be exacerbated due to urban sprawl, which leads to residential development in naturally flood-prone areas. In the United States (US), urban sprawl has been historically tied to racial segregation, while flood-prone suburban development has been facilitated by flood insurance. While previous studies have found links between flood exposure and socio-demographic inequities, no research has addressed this question by looking at watershed-level segregation and the location of properties relative to flood-prone areas. We evaluate socio-demographic patterns of flood impact during the 2016 Floods in Louisiana (LA), USA, and whether these impacts differed inside or outside the FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA), the nation's main flood risk indicator for property owners.

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Local Social Capital, Disaster Housing Damage, and Mental Health: Insights from Hurricane Harvey

Society and Mental Health

2024

Community-level social capital has been theorized to shape mental health, particularly in disaster contexts, but methodological complexities hamper prior studies. Pairing zip-code-level data on social capital from Opportunity Insights with repeated cross-sectional health survey data before and after Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas, we examine how local social capital moderated the mental health consequences of disaster housing damage. We first document null associations between local social capital and residents’ mental health before the disaster. Next, we fit models predicting psychological distress and poor mental health days, revealing that local levels of economic connectedness and rates of volunteering offset adverse mental health effects of home damage after the storm and patterned disaster assistance receipt.

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Affiliations

  • American Sociological Association (ASA)
  • Social Science Extreme Events Research Network (SSEER)
  • Southern Sociological Society (SSS)

Event Appearances

Social Responses to Climate Change Attributed Flooding in South Louisiana

2024 | Natural Hazards Workshop Researchers Meeting  Broomfield, CO

Analyzing Cumulative Impacts: Disaster events and depressive health outcomes in older Americans

2024 | Natural Hazards Workshop Researchers Meeting  Broomfield, CO

Racial Disparities Inside and Outside the 100-Year Flood Zone Map in Louisiana

2024 | Natural Hazards Workshop Researchers Meeting  Broomfield, CO

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Research Grants

AREER: Investigating Iterative Interrelations in Socio-Environmental Processes to Improve Climate Change Attribution Research

National Science Foundation: Human, Disasters, and Built Environment

2024-2029

Addressing Wind Risk Disparities and Fostering Social Equity within the Coastal Master Plan

RESTORE Act Center of Excellence for Louisiana – Research Awards

2024-2026

Systems Based Approaches to Risk and Resilience: the Louisiana Social, Environment, and Economic Resilience (LA-SEER) Center

LSU Provost’s Fund for Innovation in Research – Big Idea Research Grants

2024-2025

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