At the ISTSS 2005 Awards Ceremony in November, Fran Norris, PhD, received the Robert Laufer Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement. The award is given annually to an individual or group who has made an outstanding contribution to research in the field of traumatic stress studies.
Norris has made a career of high quality, complex, socially relevant, accessible and policy-relevant research on responses to traumatic stress. Her methodological and theoretical sophistication has provided a model for the field.
One of the most prominent and original researchers in the field of PTSD, Norris’s work combines scholarly creativity with the problem-solving basis of all good science. Her work ranges from empirical and quantitative to qualitative and practical. Her empirical and review papers present the readers with unprejudiced use of many different research and intellectual strategies based on the premise that any kind of scientific inquiry entails its own legitimate way of looking at the world.
According to Krys Kaniasty, PhD, editor of Anxiety,Stress & Coping: An International Journal, “Fran’s work manifests robust scholarly creativity while staying true to the tenor of good science – the mixture of challenging theory, societal problem solving and a genuine concern for people.” Kaniasty nominated Norris for the 2005 Robert Laufer Award.
Her career spans the entire spectrum of trauma and PTSD, including her influential work on life events and mental health in older adults in the 1980s, with a shift to trauma and disaster in the ‘90s. She helped define the nature of traumatic events, and studied the processes that moderate and mediate people’s responses to these events. She has focused much of her work on assessment and methodological issues, including the impact of cross-cultural contexts. Her innovative reviews of the literature in 2002 synthesized the findings of disaster research and pointed a new direction for trauma researchers in the post-9/11 world.
Norris received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Western Kentucky Univeristy, where she graduated summa cum laude. She then received her MA and PhD in Community and Social Psychology from the University of Louisville, where she later became associate director of the Urban Studies Center.
She eventually moved to the Department of Psychology at Georgia State University, where she was professor, director of graduate studies, and associate chair. Presently she is research professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School and a member of the National Center for PTSD in White River Junction, Vermont.
During the course of her distinguished career, Norris has been awarded numerous research grants and participated in myriad professional organizations. She has served as deputy and associate editor for the Journal of Traumatic Stress and editor of PTSD Research Quarterly.
Over the years, many researchers came to rely on Norris for continuous scholarly expertise, experience, wisdom and encouragements. Fran’s fascination with psychological science, her genuine interest in scholarly discovery and her supportive working style made many of her professional relationships examples of true synergy.
After two decades of concentration on empirical research, Dr. Norris most recently has undertaken two initiatives that might ultimately transcend her theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of trauma and PTSD because they reach out beyond the circles of academic pursuits. Fran’s timely work evaluating disaster mental health programs brings together her respect for scholarly rigor and her true concern for suffering of victims and people who try to help them.
Norris’s vision and leadership in creating the Research Education in Disaster Mental Health (REDMH) program exemplifies a thoughtful attempt to create an interdisciplinary community of disaster researchers as well as to invite and mentor new talent.
These new enterprises, in conjunction with her long and distinguished career, define Fran Norris as a complete professional and a pioneer in the field of traumatic stress.