Roger E. Kasperson

Current Research Interests

Roger Kasperson’s research in recent years has focused upon efforts to develop a stronger understanding of how the vulnerability of people, places and ecosystems can be better understood. Working with colleagues at Clark University, Harvard University, the Stockholm Environment Institute, and the University of South Carolina, he is preparing a stronger conceptual base for efforts at analysis and assessment and for management initiatives aimed at more robust approaches to reducing vulnerability and building resilience. A current project, under the coordination of Harvard University, involves developing strategies for bridging the gap between the worlds of science and practice. A second project involves the formulation of a conceptual framework for incorporating sustainability into several sectors of European environmental policy. A third National Science Foundation project, begun in 2005, involves the creation of improved methods for analyzing and managing highly uncertain risks. Included in this is a continuing interest in how adaptive management strategies can be used to improve societal anticipation and response to terrorist actions.

Selected Publications

Kasperson, R.E., and M. Berberian, eds. 2011. Integrating science and policy: Vulnerability and resilience in global environmental change. London: Earthscan. 457 pp.

Kasperson, J.X., R.E. Kasperson, and B.L. Turner, II. 2010. Vulnerability of Coupled Human-Ecological Systems to Global Environmental Change. In Human Footprints on the Global Environment: Threats to Sustainability, ed. Eugene A. Rosa, Andreas Diekmann, Thomas Dietz, and C. C. Jaeger, 231-294. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Weichselgartner, J., and R.E. Kasperson. 2010. Barriers in the science-policy-practice interface: Toward a knowledge-action-system in global environmental change research. Global Environmental Change 20, no. 2: 266-277.

Rosa, E.A., S.P. Tuler, B. Fischhoff, T. Webler, S.M. Friedman, R.E. Sclove, K. Shrader-Frechette, M.R. English, R.E. Kasperson, R.L. Goble, T.M. Leschine, W. Freudenburg, C. Chess, C. Perrow, K. Erikson, and J.F. Short. 2010. Nuclear waste: Knowledge waste? Science 329 (13 August): 762-763.

Ahearne, J., L. Dodd, S. Hecher, D. Hoffman, and R. Kasperson. 2007. U.S.-Russian collaboration in combating radiological terrorism. Washington: National Academies Press. 113 pp.

Stern, P.C., and R.E. Kasperson, eds. 2010. Facilitating climate change responses: A report of two workshops on knowledge from the social and behavioral sciences. Washington: National Academies of Science.

Kasperson, J.X. and R.E. Kasperson. 2005. The social contours of risk. London: Earthscan.

Pidgeon, N., R.E. Kasperson and P. Slovic. 2003. The social amplification of risk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kasperson, J.X. and R.E. Kasperson, Eds. 2001. Global Environmental Risk. Tokyo/London: United Nations University Press and Earthscan.

Kasperson, J.X. and R.E. Kasperson, Eds. 1995. Regions at risk: Comparisons of threatened environments. Tokyo/New York: United Nations University Press.