IBS Associations
Assistant Director, Natural Hazards Center
Environment and Society Program
Research Interests
Sociology of Disasters, Children and Youth, Schools and Disasters, Community Resilience, Convergence Research, Qualitative Research Methods, Social Stratification
Brief Biography
Jennifer Tobin is assistant director of the Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado Boulder. She has been involved in a wide range of funded research projects focusing on topics such as children and schools, disaster risk reduction, and community resilience following disasters. Tobin leads the organization and planning of the annual Natural Hazards Workshop. She is the administrator of the Natural Hazards Center’s long standing Quick Response Research Award Program, funded by the National Science Foundation. She also administers special calls for research funded by additional federal partners. Tobin is actively engaged in the NSF-funded CONVERGE facility headquartered at the Natural Hazards Center, is collaborating on a United States Geological Survey-funded project focused on Earthquake Early Warning and Schools, holds a secretariat position and is co-chair of the Justice, Equity, and Future Leadership Committee for the North American Alliance of Hazards and Disasters Research Institutes (NAAHDRI), and is co-editor of the CONVERGE Extreme Events Research Check Sheets Series.
Tobin received her PhD from the department of sociology at Colorado State University. Her dissertation research focused on educational continuity following the 2013 Colorado Front Range Floods. She earned her bachelor’s in sociology and women’s studies in 2005 and master’s in sociology in 2008. Her master’s thesis research drew on qualitative interviews with local disaster recovery workers and single mothers who were displaced to Colorado after Hurricane Katrina. Tobin is the recipient of the 2014 Beth B. Hess Memorial Dissertation Scholarship.
