Alexander Rezk

Alex is a second-year PhD Student in the Anthropology & Environmental Policy program.. An environmental social scientist, he is trained both as an anthropologist and sociologist. He previously obtained a Master’s Degree in International Development and Social Change at Clark University, where he focused on the implications of climate change and its related consequences on sustainable global development, and a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from Worcester State University with a focus on Environmental Sociology. Alex’s research area is focused upon the human dimensions of climate change as they pertain to disaster and risk management as an issue of environmental justice. Specifically, he is interested in how local, regional, and federal bodies quantify, plan for, and cope with loss and damage sustained by coastal hazards linked to climate impacts. His past research examined how Hurricane Sandy was parsed by local government as a climate-related issue, and how the official disaster response and subsequent policy initiatives either reflected or denied an ongoing commitment by regional leadership to tackle coastal resilience head on. For his dissertation, he plans on expanding the purview of this analysis, linking sites of recent coastal disaster impact in a geographically diversified attempt to unpack how neoliberal modalities of resilience-building affect future preparedness toward chronic disaster exposure. He currently works at the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center as a Research Assistant.