Craig Colten, Ph.D., The Water Institute’s founding director of human dimensions from 2013 to 2015, is Professor Emeritus of Geography at LSU and has studied the historical geography of hazards for more than 35 years. Since 2000, Colten’s research has focused on community resilience, adaptation to environmental change, and how marginalized communities survived in Louisiana’s perilous coastal region.

Colten has spearheaded the Human Coast Initiative at LSU and participated in research funded by the Corps of Engineers, the National Academy of Sciences and the Robert Wood Foundation, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Geographers and earned a Ph.D. from Syracuse University.