Rate My Professor Hans Louis-Charles

Hans Louis-Charles, Ph.D., serves as Associate Professor in the Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness program within the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Disaster Science and Management from the University of Delaware, an M.A. in International Development from American University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Central Florida. Louis-Charles's research specializations encompass emergency management policy, collective behavior in disasters such as household preparedness, evacuation, and sheltering, community resilience, risk communication, disaster research ethics, social vulnerability, environmental justice, and disaster mythology. He engages in applied and theoretical research on human and organizational behavior in disasters to advance policy and practice in emergency management.

Louis-Charles has made notable contributions through publications, including Louis-Charles, H. M., Aguirre, B., & Kitnurse, J. (In Press). The Aftermath of Irma in the U.S. Virgin Islands: Temporal Patterns of Looting, Burglaries, and Community Solidarity. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters; Louis-Charles, H. M., Howard, R., Remy, L., Nibbs, F., & Turner, G. (2020). Ethical Considerations for Post-Disaster Fieldwork and Data Collection in the Caribbean. American Behavioral Scientist, 64(8):1129-1144; Teron, L., Louis-Charles, H. M., Nibbs, F., & Uppalapati, S. S. (2019). Establishing a Toxics Mobility Inventory for Climate Change and Pollution. Sustainability: The Journal of Record, 12(4), 226-234; Martins, V., Louis-Charles, H., Nigg, J., Kendra, J., & Sisco, S. (2018). Household Disaster Preparedness in New York City before Superstorm Sandy: Findings and Recommendations. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 15(4); and Louis-Charles, H. M., & Teron, L. (2017). Environmental Migration, Public Perception, and Immigration Policy: Examining the Hidden Environmental Toll of Terror Hysteria. Environmental Justice, 10(6), 181-185. His work on ethical post-disaster fieldwork was selected for the opening plenary of the 2020 International Research Committee on Disasters-Researchers Meeting at the 45th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop. He was Co-Principal Investigator on the National Science Foundation INCLUDES project Minority SURGE Capacity in Disasters, mobilizing underrepresented STEM graduate scholars for U.S. Virgin Islands recovery after the 2017 hurricanes. As Vice President and Founding Fellow of the William A. Anderson Fund, he mentors underrepresented doctoral students in hazard mitigation and disaster risk reduction. He teaches HSEP 310 Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, HSEP 391 Disaster Response and Recovery, and HSEP 603 Risk Assessment.