Eugene A. Rosa’s research program has focused on environmental topics – particularly energy, technology, risk issues, and global environmental change – with attention to both theoretical and policy concerns. His current research focuses on two complementary topics: technological risk and global environmental change. Among his major risk projects were the development of logic for categorizing risks and a comparative study of risk perceptions between Americans and Japanese. His global change research is devoted to specifying the anthropogenic causes of greenhouse gases, ecological footprints, to the historical relationships between CO2 loads and societal well-being, to the history of social thought on climate, and to testing theories of environmental impacts.
Rosa is the Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of Natural Resource and Environmental Policy in the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, and Professor, and past chair, of Sociology, Faculty Associate in the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center, Affiliated Professor in the Program in Environmental Science, Affiliated Professor of Fine Arts, and Faculty Associate, Center for Environmental Research, Education, and Outreach (CEREO). He is simultaneously a Visiting Scholar in the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. He serves on the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Standing Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change.