Natural Hazards Resilience Speakers Series: Dr. Branda Nowell
Dr. Branda Nowell: “NCSU Fire Chasers Project”
March 24, 2021
Dr. Branda Nowell is an organizational-community psychologist specializing in inter-organizational relationships, social networks, and community capacity for multi-agent collaboration and coordination within complex problem domains. She teaches courses in network governance, organizational behavior, change management, organizational theory, and program evaluation. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she integrates community and organizational psychology with public management to better understand community-based networks of public and nonprofit agencies working in a common problem domain. She currently co-leads a research team (firechasers.ncsu.edu) focused on advancing the science of adaptive capacity toward more disaster resilient communities. Since 2008, this team has worked in collaboration with the US Forest Service on research aimed to improve inter-agency coordination and communication during large scale wildfire events. Dr. Nowell’s research has received awards from both the APA Society for Community Action and Research as well as the Academy of Management Public and Nonprofit Division. Her published work appears in the American Journal of Community Psychology, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Evaluation and Program Planning, and Conflict Resolution Quarterly.