Dr. Scott Knowles

Scott Knowles is a professor of the Maritime Administration Department at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He received his PhD in History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from Johns Hopkins University. His work focuses on risk and disaster, with particular interests in modern cities, technology, and public policy. His most recent book is The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (UPenn Press, 2011), and he is series coeditor of "Critical Studies in Risk and Disaster" (UPenn Press, launch 2014). Presently he is also a faculty research fellow of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. Since 2011, he has been a member of the Fukushima Forum collaborative research community, with which he is currently coauthoring an edited volume on the Fukushima disasters.

RCC Research Project: 

Selected publications:

• The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

• Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

• “Defending Philadelphia: A Historical Case Study of Civil Defense in the Early Cold War.” Public Works Management & Policy 11, no. 3 (2007): 217-232.

• “Lessons in the Rubble: The World Trade Center and the History of Disaster Investigations in the United States.” History and Technology (Spring, 2003): 9-28.

• with Robert H. Kargon.“Knowledge for Use: Science, Higher Education, and America’s New Industrial Heartland, 1880-1915.” Annals of Science (January, 2002): 1-20.

• with Stuart W. Leslie. “Industrial Versailles: Eero Saarinen’s Corporate Campuses for GM, IBM, and AT&T.” Isis (March, 2001): 1-33.