Smith-Heisters is Assistant Research Professor in the Center for Emergency Management and Homeland Security (CEMHS) at Arizona State University. She is an interdisciplinary researcher trained in multi-method qualitative institutional analysis in the tradition of the Ostrom Workshop. Her research supports cooperation, decision making, and organizational learning through assessment of formal policy interventions and informal norms- and rules-based adaptive behaviors in complex governance systems. Through community-based planning for fire, floods, drought, and other threats, Smith-Heisters aids communities and organizations adapting to scarcity, change, and hazards. In addition to extensive evaluation work co-produced with public agencies, Smith-Heisters has facilitated private, non-profit sector research on topics ranging from the world's longest-enduring organizations to Fortune 500 companies. In her doctoral research, Smith-Heisters investigated operational decision making in large-scale irrigation infrastructure systems, which constitute some of the world's longest-enduring (and thus most adaptive) human systems. She earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Social Science at Arizona State University, where she was a graduate affiliate of the Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment (CBIE). She is also a current affiliate of the Center for Organization Research and Design (CORD) at ASU, where her areas of interest include institutionalization of knowledge within organizations, organizational diversity, and public entrepreneurship.
In her roles at CEMHS and CORD, Smith-Heisters specializes in data collection using interviews and text media, content analysis, thematic analysis, narrative analysis, discourse analysis, textual analysis, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), qualitative social network coding, and literature review. True to her multi-method research roots, she most often employs qualitative analysis on multidisciplinary teams, working to integrate qualitative and quantitative (e.g., survey, geographical, network, bibliographic, machine learning, game theoretical) approaches to build frameworks and provide actionable insights. She has applied these methods on topics including water management, natural resources planning and mitigation, and disaster response.
Name Pronunciation Hints
- skEYE-druh — First part of first name sounds like "sky"
- smith-hEYE-sters — First part of second last name sounds like "high"