Dr. Kristin Olofsson

Dr. Kristin Olofsson, assistant professor of political science at Oklahoma State University, is a member of the OK NSF EPSCoR Track-1 RII Award titled Socially Sustainable Solutions for Water, Carbon, and Infrastructure Resilience in Oklahoma. The $20 million research project is a social science-led, multi-disciplinary collaboration among social, physical, biological, engineering, and computational scientists. More than thirty researchers from across the state are working together on the project, which began July 1, 2020. 

Dr. Olofsson's research interests are in the areas of public policy, energy/environmental policy, political behavior, and political psychology. She specializes in environmental and energy policy, using comparative research design to focus on the dynamics of policy coalitions and networks of policy actors engaged in policymaking. Dr. Olofsson explores differentiation in institutional settings to better understand how the people involved in the policy process shape policy outcomes. Her research questions the rational capabilities of policy actors and how decisions are made in contentious politics. Dr. Olofsson often uses survey data to explore political behavior and utilizes network analysis and geospatial modeling in her work.  

Dr. Olofsson's research supports the Social Dynamics Research Framework aspect of the OK NSF EPSCoR project. Human perceptions and beliefs are at the heart of the most critical challenges facing Oklahoma. They shape behaviors and collective decisions, and therefore our responses to the changing world. Using data from the M-SISNet, the social dynamics team will (a) measure and model perceptions and beliefs underpinning the social narratives that shape debates among the public, opinion leaders, and scientists about the emerging, interconnected, and salient threats to Oklahomans identified in our research focus areas; (b) evaluate how widely shared narratives have undermined collective action to pursue convergent solutions to wicked problems that recognize and address the array of anthropogenic drivers of these threats; and (c) measure social valuation for solutions using willingness-to-pay for potential sustainable solutions. 

Coupled with the project’s four interconnected focus areas, the Social Dynamics framework provides the structure and direction of the project. The distinct but interrelated focus areas and the research questions they pursue were selected for this project because they deepen understanding of overlapping natural and human dynamics that drive critical problems facing Oklahoma today. Treated individually as stand-alone problems, they are susceptible to social polarization and policy gridlock. Addressed as an integrated set, these dynamics offer the prospect for revised understandings of problem boundaries and provide the potential for informed value tradeoffs across social groups that can enable socially sustainable solutions to address our most pressing problems. 

Dr. Olofsson is a former National Science Foundation (NSF) Sustainability Research Networks AirWaterGas Student Research Fellow and an NSF Research Coordination Networks Sustainable Cities Student Fellow.

Learn more about the OK NSF EPSCoR research project.