Paige Fischer 90F

Paige Fischer is a scholar of human behavior and environmental change. Focusing at the level of individuals, Fischer studies how people cope with and adapt to increasing wildfires, droughts, storms, biological invasions, and other climate-induced changes, specifically in the context of forests.

Fischer's scholarship contributes to the fields of human-environment geography and natural resource sociology by improving the scientific understanding of human behavior as a mechanism through which social systems shape ecological systems and vice versa. She has been a professor at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability since 2014, before which she worked as a Research Social Scientist for the U.S Forest Service. 

Fischer received her Ph.D. in forest resources from Oregon State University. She has served as chair of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Human Dimensions of Global Change (HDGC) Specialty Group; and executive council member and chair of the International Association of Society and Natural Resources of the Professional Development Committee; and contributing author to Chapter 16, UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability).

Fischer is an associate editor for the journal Frontiers in Climate and Ecology and Society and she was recently awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for research on wildfire as a social-ecological system in Chile.