Dana R. Fisher is an American sociologist, professor of sociology, public speaker, and author. She is the director of the Center for Environment, Community, and Equity and a professor in the School of International Service at American University. Her areas of research and expertise are activism, democracy, the climate crisis, and environmental policy.
Her most recent book is Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action (2024). She is also author of American Resistance: from the Women’s March to the Blue Wave (2019) and Activism Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America (2006).
She is a self-described climate apocalyptic optimist[1] and co-developed (with Andrew Jorgenson) the framework of AnthroShift to explain how social actors are reconfigured in the aftermath of widespread perceptions and experiences of risk.[2]
Fisher graduated with an AB in East Asian Studies and Environmental Studies from Princeton University, an MS in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was awarded the Katherine DuPre Lumpkin Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Prior to her appointment to American University, Fisher's previous faculty positions were at University of Maryland, Columbia University, the Sciences Po, and University of Konstanz. Her Research has been featured in media outlets such as The Washington Post,[3] The Christian Science Monitor,[4][5] Chicago Tribune, USA Today, CBS News,[6] NPR,[7] the No Jargon podcast of the Scholars Strategy Network,[8] and in "The Collectors: Political Action," a documentary short by FiveThirtyEight and ESPN Films.[9]
Fisher was a contributing author on citizen engagement and civic activism for the 2021 Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[10] [11]