Bethany L Van Brown, Ph.D.

Degrees & Certifications

• Ph.D. in Sociology, University of Delaware

Research

Dr. Van Brown’s research reflects the strategic goals of social justice by focusing on reducing social inequality in order to make people and communities more resilient. Her concentration on social problems, such as disaster and crime and disaster research methods, addresses the unequal distribution of opportunity and privilege.

Dr. Van Brown’s analyses of crime and disaster consider the full range of pre-event social processes that create disasters, including climate change and increasingly complicated social structure, and contributes to a new Criminology of Disaster. Equity issues around COVID-19 such as video camera use in online classrooms led Dr. Van Brown to explore the intersection of trauma-informed educational practices, culturally responsive pedagogies and anti-racist practices. She believes of these topics address root causes of inequality, challenge ideologies that perpetuate them, and provide policy implications that can objectively help communities be more resilient.

Awards & Fellowships

During Bethany Van Brown's time at the University of Delaware, she participated in projects about the movement of critical supplies after disaster, domestic violence and disaster and post-disaster improvisation behavior. Her dissertation, organizational response and recovery of domestic violence shelters in the aftermath of disaster, was selected as one of the Public Entity Risk Institute’s (PERI) national fellows and later won the Samuel H. Prince doctoral dissertation award on a disaster topic in the social and behavioral sciences