Faculty bio

Amanda Stasiewicz is an academic expert in the human dimensions of wildfires. She studies how individuals, communities, and organizations adapt to changing environmental circumstances. Amanda conducts research at the interface of communities and wildfire risk, particularly focusing on how communities and organizations navigate becoming more fire adapted in an increasingly fire-prone world. Her current work focuses on wildfire weather communication and resident evacuation, the impacts of public safety power shutoffs policy on communities and industry, new or novel programs for mitigating parcel-level wildfire risk in collaboration with insurance companies, alternatives to evacuation, local wildfire response and suppression capacity, and the effectiveness of wildfire-related policy and programs.

Recent Media:
With a fire burning just miles away, residents of a Washington town dig in (NBC News, Aug. 2, 2024)
Utilities in Oregon advise to prepare now for wildfires (Government Technology, May 2, 2024)
The terrifying choices created by wildfires (The New Yorker, Sept. 6, 2022)
This isn’t the California I married (The New York Times, Jan. 3, 2022)
California’s forever fire (ProPublica, Jan. 3, 2022)
Why some people stay behind in a wildfire (The New York Times, Sept. 24, 2021)
Resources stretched thin as fighters battle 13 wildfires across California (KTVU Los Angeles, Aug. 23, 2021)
7 California State University campuses collaborating on plan to address recent wildfires (ABC7, Jan. 17, 2021)
San Jose State opens groundbreaking wildfire research center (KTVU Los Angeles, Sept. 1, 2020)
'We're drying the fuels': How climate change is making wildfires worse in the West (Arizona Republic, Aug. 28, 2020)
How Bay Area firefighting has changed during the coronavirus pandemic (The Mercury News, Aug. 25, 2020)