Jasmine Waddell is an Assistant Professor in the School for Environmental and Public Affairs at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Dr. Waddell is an American and British trained comparative institutionalist scholar who studies social vulnerability, social exclusion, and poverty in the US and Global South. Dr. Waddell has authored a number of reports and articles, including a chapter book on the current and future status of the Gulf Coast region, Resilience and Opportunity (2011). She is currently working on a project comparing asset building development strategies with renewable energy in the Mississippi Delta region of the US.  Dr. Waddell is an emerging leader in the field of resilience studies focusing on theoretical approaches to regenerating communities after disaster events.

In addition to her traditional academic work, Dr. Waddell served as the Senior Officer for Research and Learning at Oxfam America. At Oxfam, she managed major research reports on social vulnerability to climate change (Exposed!), Black-Brown alliance building (Building Common Ground), measuring human development (A Portrait of Mississippi and A Portrait of Louisiana) and post-Katrina recovery (I Am America). A Rhodes Scholar, Dr. Waddell assessed the implementation of social welfare policy in South Africa during and after apartheid with the Center for the Analysis of South African Social Policy (CASASP) at the University of Oxford.  Dr. Waddell serves as a Trustee for the Brown University Corporation.