Austin Lord
Austin Lord, Ph.D. is the Senior Fellow in the Energy, Water and Sustainability program at the Stimson Center. His research focuses on disaster and climate risk management, water and energy policy, infrastructure development, and environmental governance. Lord leads Stimson’s disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation-oriented work in the Himalayan region, which is currently focused on developing monitoring and early warning systems for cascading hazards and extreme flow events. He also contributes to other Stimson projects focused on water resource management, infrastructure development, energy security, climate-resilience, and socio-environmental politics in South Asia.
Prior to joining Stimson, Lord was an Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment, where he conducted research on disaster risk management and anticipatory action and organized the 2024 UR Himalayan Climate Data Field Lab. In the past, he has worked as a Consultant with the United Nations Development Programme in Nepal, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), the Global Emergency Group, Lutheran World Relief, and USAID-funded programs with the Nepal River Conservation Trust. In the wake of Nepal’s 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, Lord served as the director of a grassroots humanitarian initiative called Rasuwa Relief – and he later returned as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow (2019-2020) to continue his research on the long-term impacts of this disaster.
Over the years, Lord has led a range of different policy-oriented studies focused on diverse topics including hydropower development, post-disaster recovery, alternative energy policy, river basin management, and social vulnerability. He has published his interdisciplinary scholarship in fifteen books and academic journals, including Political Geography, Economic Anthropology, WIREs Water, Modern Asian Studies, Eurasian Geography and Economics, and Limn. He has also written a variety of essays and commentaries for outlets like Dialogue Earth, Cultural Anthropology, Society and Space, and the Nepali Times, curated photographic exhibitions, and helped produce documentary films. He is currently working on a book manuscript that builds from his PhD dissertation on post-disaster recovery and “vital uncertainties” in the Langtang Valley of Nepal.
He holds a B.A. in Economics and Studio Art from Dartmouth College, a Master of Environmental Science degree from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University.
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