Wood obtained her B.A. cum laude in 1975 at the School for General Studies at Columbia University, and entered Columbia’s graduate anthropology program, where she studied under Joan Vincent and Conrad Arensberg, obtaining a doctorate with distinction in 1991. Her dissertation is a comparative study of the impact of historical social formations on earthquake recovery in the Sele Valley, Campania. She jointed Rocco Caporale and Ino Rossi in a multi-year study of disaster recovery and reconstruction after the 1980 earthquake in Campania and Basilicata, Italy funded by the National Science Foundation.