Olaf College. Vivian conducts research focused on the political, environmental, and technological facets of disasters. Her current book project examines the intersections of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the decades-long civil war which ended in 2009 in Sri Lanka. She is currently developing a new project on climate change and sea surface warming in the Indian Ocean basin. She looks forward to building bridges between environmental studies and sociology/anthropology. Vivian received her B.A. from Pomona College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis.