Studying the traumatic effects of hurricanes Ike and Katrina on coastal communities in Texas has garnered two UT graduate students recognition from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.
On Monday, Jerry Lord, an anthropology graduate student, and Megan Reid, a sociology graduate student, were each awarded the foundation’s $20,000 Harry Moore Fellowships, which are given annually to students in Moore’s line of research — disaster studies.
Merrell Foote, a Hogg Foundation spokeswoman, said the two were perfect for the award because their research is so closely related to Moore’s.
“The area they are working in was perfectly aligned with the work Dr. Moore carried out,” she said. “It’s supposed to be aligned with his area of interest, and he was particularly interested in Texas tornadoes and hurricanes.”
Lord, who had originally intended to conduct his doctoral studies on the way people in coastal towns viewed hurricane risk, was living in Galveston when Hurricane Ike hit.
“Around September, Ike rolled into town, and my project changed pretty quickly,” Lord said.
Evacuated to Austin, Lord found Moore’s research archives on Hurricane Carla and reformatted his research goals to look at disaster recovery in the area.
Reid’s research has focused on the hardships that federal disaster-relief policies have created for poor and minority hurricane evacuees and is based largely on two years of interviews with Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Austin.
Foote said the work the two are doing will help identify problems such as long-lasting trauma experienced by those living in areas devastated by natural disasters.
“The Hogg Foundation was created to help improve the mental health of people in Texas, and we see this as just one of the ways in which we will carry out that mission,” she said.
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